bit sharp around the edges. Don’t piss her off and she won’t have a reason to turn you into anything.”
“Hmm,” I hummed, not sure I was liking the idea of staying at her apartment quite as much. Then again, a crochety old lady was good at keeping the vandals away. “How’d you end up living with her?”
Nathalie tucked her hands in her pockets as we walked down the sidewalk. It was a nice day. Cold, but not wet or cloudy. The winds were a pain, but the sun helped warm the chill.
“I never cared for witch society. The schmoozing, the parties, all of it. Just wasn’t me. My parents already regarded me as a failure of a daughter when they asked me to join the Antares Coven. My condition was that I got to move out. Never specified where. I approached Señora Rosara because she’s a hermit and they all think she’s crazy.” She smiled as she recalled the memory.
“You wanted a buffer between you and your family.”
“Pretty much.” She shrugged. “Besides, she’s not that bad. She likes Barry. He brings her lemon tarts when he comes over.”
I thought of the fae-witch and the way he looked at Nathalie. I’m sure he did bring tarts to make the old lady like him.
Nathalie came to a stop beside me and pulled out the keys. “We’re still a ways from the car,” I started. She hit a button, and the silver beauty beside us chirped in response.
“You can drive?” I demanded, thinking back on the conversation we had in my beat-up old Honda before we got captured by Lucifer.
“Never said I couldn’t,” she smirked. “You assumed, and I didn’t correct you.”
“I knew you were a Le Fay, but the apartment, the car—have anything else you’d like to tell me about? Maybe a hidden mansion somewhere, or a helicopter?”
Nathalie laughed as she opened the driver door. I walked around to the side and climbed in. How she had a car, and not just any car, but a nice one with a name I didn’t recognize—and it wasn’t damaged—was beyond me.
“No mansion or helicopters, I’m afraid. Although, my family does own a nice place in the mountains of Tennessee. It used to be a ski resort, but after the Magic Wars, business wasn’t exactly booming, so they shut it down. Now they only pop in for secret coven business and stuff.” She shrugged as I settled onto the leather interior. I eyed the fancy dashboard, my incredulity rising.
“So your family pays for all this?”
“I didn’t say that,” she replied, a bit of ice in her tone.
“Do they?”
“No,” she said. “I’m independently wealthy.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Independently wealthy? You? With your weird magic?”
“Yup,” she said, popping the p.
“I’m not buying it,” I said.
“That’s nice. I’m rich, and it’s my money. Whether or not you believe me is your problem.” She smiled with saccharine sweetness that made me want to gag.
“I can’t believe you let me pay for breakfast.”
“Well, as you like to say, you’re an asshole. You kidnapped me. The least you could do was buy me breakfast after leaving me tied to a chair for a day and a half and making me sick.” She said it both amused and not. A tiny inkling of guilt went through me, but I pushed it down.
“I didn’t know you wouldn’t kill me,” I pointed out.
“Mhmm,” she hummed, pressing a button. The engine started, but it was only a whisper of a thing. Not the loud churn I was used to. She eased out of the spot and onto the mostly empty road.
“How do you keep this thing from getting robbed or broken into?”
She flashed me a look like I was dense. It occurred to me as she said it. “Magic.”
“You don’t have a cloak on it.”
“Don’t need one,” she said, turning onto the highway. We were closer to the cabin than I realized. I’d parked further away. “I got Barry to ward it, same as the apartment.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, leaning back and to the side. “You can do stuff like you did in the pit with Dara, and summon the wind without speaking, but you can’t ward?”
Nathalie sighed. “As you like to remind me, my magic is weird. Basic spells are hard, and mine don’t often work. If someone comes at me, I can defend myself. Sort of. Not even that’s consistent.” She shrugged.
“And the wind?” I prompted.
“I can sense it. Little threads of magic in the air. I wave my fingers and