Anna's Hope Episode One (10 page)

She waved at him, her hand hovering in the
air for entirely too long.

When she heard her front gate creak closed,
she tucked her hair behind her ears and bit her lip.

Before she could pause to think about the
curious Scott, Luminaria screamed at her.

Racing back inside, Anna garnished the
tuna, set it before her possessed cat, and gave the door one last
look.

Closing it, she finally went to bed.

Tomorrow would no
doubt be a big day,
and if given half a chance, it would be bigger than
today.

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 slowly,
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.