Anna's Hope Episode One

  Chapter 7

  She woke in a strangely good mood for someone who’d spent the night like she had.

  With an arm pressing sleepily into her head, she blinked at the ceiling.

  She let her lips curl into a soft smile.

  Then, with a bang that was disproportional for her size, Luminaria jumped on the bed. “Get up, you awful witch. You are late.”

  Anna jerked up, her pillow tumbling to the floor, no doubt to be stolen by evil cockroaches or whatever nasties lived under her bed. “Ha? Late for what?”

  “Your meeting with the MEC HQ. I wouldn’t have brought it up – as law enforcement is such a bore – but our livelihood currently depends on it. And we are out of tuna,” Luminaria trilled.

  Anna rubbed her eyes. “I thought Scott didn’t make a time to go see them?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I do, however, know that we received a message from the MEC this morning, calling you to a meeting at 9 A.M. sharp.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Anna turned towards her clock, and saw it was already 9 A.M.

  “Because I enjoy seeing you struggle.” Luminaria snarled happily.

  Anna jumped out of bed. “Oh no, I need some clean clothes. Where are they? I had a washing basket of freshly folded clothes around here somewhere.” She searched around the floor.

  “I slept on them last night.” Luminaria pointed a claw at the laundry basket. The once-clean clothes were now spilled across the carpet, rumpled and covered in cat fur.

  Anna sighed.

  “Shouldn’t you hurry?” Luminaria flicked her tail. “You’re already late, and you can’t afford to lose this job – we’re already out of food.”

  Anna selected some clothes and quickly dressed. “You’d better stay here.”

  “You cannot order me around—” Luminaria began.

  “Aaron will probably be there,” Anna supplied as she pulled on a sweater, tugging her hair free from the collar with a practiced sweep of her arm.

  Luminaria ground to a halt, like a boulder suddenly realizing it didn’t want to tumble down the hill after all. “I shall stay here,” she announced, as if it had been her plan all along. “You disturbed my sleep last night, with your crawling in the door at 5 A.M. And I need my beauty sleep.” She fluffed up her whiskers with one paw.

  “Okay.” Anna raced past her, pulled on some socks as she hopped from foot to foot, then grabbed her shoes and headed for the door.

  She was still bone-weary, but she forced a smile as she raced down the path.

  Most witches believed that if you smiled at the world, it would smile back. If you taught reality how to treat you, it wouldn’t dare go against your wishes.

  Well, Anna wasn’t most witches. As soon as she smiled at the sky, she swore it got a little cloudier.

  By the time she made it to the MEC HQ, she was flustered, out of breath, and ready to flop back into bed.

  She didn’t get the chance.

  “You took your time,” someone said from behind her.

  She turned to see Scott sauntering down the street. He nodded at her. “Sleep well?”

  “Nope.”

  “Didn’t think so. But buck up. As soon as we’re finished here, you can head back home. Though considering you live with that cat, I don’t imagine it’ll be that relaxing.”

  She nodded. “So ... all we have to do is debrief with someone, right? Who will it be? Aaron?”

  Scott’s face visibly stiffened. It was as if someone had poured concrete into his veins. “Hopefully not. But knowing that idiot, he’ll want to interfere.”

  Anna blinked back her surprise. “Oh ... ah.”

  “You don’t like the guy, do you?” Scott stared at her seriously.

  “Me? I hardly know him.” She rubbed her cheeks to hide her blush. To be honest, she did like Aaron – any red-blooded witch would. He was smart, debonair, and well-accomplished. Where most wizards tended towards tats and motorbikes, Aaron was a world apart. He was sophisticated and oh so handsome.

  That being said, he had rudely and meanly taken away her job.

  “Good,” Scott conceded with a gruff cough. “Now come on. We’ll get this over with.” He muscled his way towards the door.

  Why did Anna get the impression that he was about to wade into a battle?

  As soon as they were directed to Aaron’s office, she realized why.

  This was war.

  Aaron opened the door, one stiff hand on the doorframe as he shot Scott the kind of look that sat alongside despise in the dictionary.

  Scott cracked his knuckles and walked in. He made his way into the center of the room and turned hard on his boot until he faced Aaron’s desk.

  Aaron closed the door behind them, then slowly walked back to his chair. He sat slowly. Actually, it was less slow, and more menacing.

  For her part, Anna carefully sidled towards Scott.

  Things were about to get ugly, weren’t they?

  “I’ve read your report.” Aaron gestured towards some papers on his desk.

  “No one is impressed you can read, Arana,” Scott shot back. “Now what are you going to do about it?”

  “Now you have brought this matter to the MEC’s attention, we will deal with it.”

  “That’s comforting. But that’s not what I asked. I want to know how,” Scott snarled.

  “That’s none of your business. You are a contracted bounty hunter,” Aaron said contracted with enough spite to melt the word into steam, “the procedure of the MEC is not your concern.”

  “You can’t fob this one off like you usually do. There was a goddamn soul catcher in that chapel. This is serious.”

  “That soul catcher will be long gone. It would have been called to feast on the soul of that witch. Without that soul to sustain it, it will have gone back to wherever it resides – which certainly isn’t Marchtown. If the catcher were still here, our magical instruments would be going haywire. Our only concern now is the dark wizard.”

  Scott snorted so loudly it was a surprise he didn’t blast his nose right off. “Oh it’s long gone, is it? That dark wizard knows how to call it. Don’t ask me how, but he knows. And unless we stop him, tonight he’s going to call it again. And I want to know what you’re going to do about it?”

  Aaron leaned back in his chair as he arranged his stiff arms before him. He swallowed hard, the move so tense he could have ripped his neat collar in two. “You are in no place to lecture me about correct procedure. You have brought this matter to my attention, and now you can trust that I will deal with it. You can also leave.” He fobbed a hand at the door.

  Scott snorted. “Oh, I can leave, can I? Well, jeez, I better just tuck my tail between my legs and run away, trusting that you'll deal with this. Only problem is, I don't trust you, Arana, and I never will. You burnt up whatever faith I had in you years ago.” Scott snarled, stabbing a finger at Aaron as he took an intimidating step towards his desk.

  Aaron slowly rose. He unfolded his stiff arms like a man shrugging free from chains. He stood, clamping his hands on the desk, his knuckles like carved marble. “Get out of my office, Scott.”

  “You're such an arrogant, egotistical—”

  “Why don't we all have a cup of tea?” Anna suggested. It was categorically not time for tea. Unless said tea contained enough horse tranquillizer to take down two irate wizards.

  Still, her comment was sufficiently strange that both men stopped staring daggers at each other to shoot her odd looks.

  “We should just calm down,” she hooked her hair behind her ears and clapped her hands together, “things can't be that bad.”

  Scott snorted. It was his go-to move. Either he was a bull in disguise, or he was perpetually disdainful. She knew which one it was. “Things are pretty bad, doll; there's a madman kidnapping witches. And I don't know if you've noticed – but you're a witch, and he tried to kidnap you last night.”

  “I'll deal with it,” Aaron said s
lowly, each word dripping with menace.

  “Oh, yeah, okay, like you dealt with it last night? No, wait - I dealt with it last night. If I hadn't found that chapel, I wouldn't have saved that witch. She'd be dead right now, sacrificed for whatever spell those jackasses have planned.”

  She wanted to point out she’d helped to save that witch too – if she hadn’t dispatched the wizard, things could have got ugly. She held her tongue and instead tried for a calming smile. “Why don't we just—”

  “You have absolutely no right to lecture me on how to save people,” Aaron spat. There was so much fire behind his words, the air sparked.

  Anna sneezed.

  “You want to drag skeletons out of the closet, Arana? Fine. We can do that. You're the one who let her die.” Scott's expression crumpled, his brow digging hard into his nose as his lips knotted with tension.

  Aaron paled. For a man as nicely tanned as he was, that was quite an achievement. “How dare you,” he said through sharp breaths.

  They were about to attack each other – Anna could feel it. Her eyes were watering from the intense build up in magic. Also, their expressions weren't exactly friendly. They looked like two men ready to abandon their last scraps of decency for abject hatred.

  She had to do something.

  “Why don't I just ah ... set up a sting operation? I mean, that wizard already tried to kidnap me last night. I bet – if given the opportunity – he’d tried to do it again. All we have to do is set a trap and—”

  Scott, without breaking eye contact with Aaron, tilted his head her way and said: “no.”

  “But it's the perfect plan. How else are we going to capture that guy? That wizard isn’t going to go back to that bar. He can summon travelling hell portals. His base of operations could be anywhere. The only way to find him is to get him to find us.”

  “No,” Scott dismissed her again.

  “It could work,” Aaron spoke over the top of him. “She has a point – currently we have no way of finding out where he is. And if he can call a soul catcher, it is imperative we find him as soon as possible.”

  “So you're going to use a witch with magical allergies to bait him.” Scott shook his head and laughed bitterly. “Tell me, Aaron, does anyone matter to you? I mean, anyone other than yourself?”

  Aaron swallowed, his jawbones so pronounced they looked ready to spring from his face. “How dare you.”

  They were about to start up again.

  “Okay, now, as far as I'm aware, I don't actually need to ask permission from either of you to do this. It's my prerogative as a contracted bounty hunter to track down targets as I see fit. So ... I'm just going to do it.”

  Both men whipped their heads around. “No,” they both said at once.

  “Ha, I thought you said it was a good idea?” Scott challenged, returning his attention to Aaron.

  “I thought it was a good idea in principle – not with her.”

  “Well on that we can agree.”

  Anna paled as both men went back to arguing.

  She knew she wasn’t the best witch in the world, but she didn’t need that fact paraded in public.

  True, she didn’t want to use herself as bait, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t do this. If the operation was set up right and she had backup, it was doable ... maybe.

  It was worth a try though. She’d felt that strange dark magic last night, and she knew it could open up Hell itself, given time.

  Plus ... she wanted to face him again. That wizard. She wanted to capture him.

  Instinctively, she rubbed her chest. It was probably her imagination, but she could still feel a ghostly touch around her heart.

  “You’re such a joke,” Scott shouted at Aaron.

  “How dare you,” Aaron retorted.

  Anna was already close to the door. Silently, she picked up her bag and walked out without either man noticing.

  She’d come to this city to reinvent herself. The old Anna wasn’t the kind to throw caution to the wind and track down an extremely powerful dark wizard.

  The new Anna lifted her chin and stared at the gloomy sky.

  Bringing a hand up, she rubbed her chest.

  She walked home.