Witch In Charge - Celia Kyle Page 0,35

inner ear to the fleshless bone cradled between her palms.

All right, babe. What’s the deal?

At first she felt stupid—whoever heard of thinking at a skull?—but then something faint tingled up the veins in her arms, searching for her heart.

“Blindnesssss,” the silent voice hissed inside her.

Its presence thrilled her, and Kelly doubled down, concentrating hard as she willed into the skull with everything she had. Only when she heard a satisfied sigh from Owyn did she dare to open her eyes. There, inside the skull's sockets, a very dim light glowed, and Kelly realized she'd just given a long-dead skull some version of sight.

“Thanksssss.”

Kelly barked out that unguarded laugh of hers, and her mentor plucked back the skull and snugged it onto the shelf.

“I’m moderately impressed,” he said. It was faint praise, but it was the most she had received from him and it warmed the inside of her ribs like a high compliment. “Let’s try for something more challenging, shall we? How are your portal skills?”

Kelly answered with a devious smile as he fussed through a stack of files.

“Something small,” he mumbled, thumbing through the pile. “A-ha. This should do just fine.” He slapped the file into her hands and pointed to an address. “Can you take us there?”

“Child’s play.”

In the blink of an eye, Kelly cracked open a hole in the fabric of space, allowing the two of them to step through into a low, dark room.

“What the hell?!”

They whirled around to see a woman crouched in the corner of her bed, holding her comforter against her chin like a protective shield. It was well into the night, after all.

“It’s Owyn Stahagan and assistant,” he said, with a voice of true authority.

However drowsy the figure in the bed was, that jostled her to full attention.

“Oh! I’m so sorry, Mr. Stahagan. If only I were dressed…”

“Never mind that,” he said, brusque as ever. “Are you still afflicted?”

“What do you think?”

The woman leaned forward into the moonlight streaming through her window, and Kelly sized up the situation immediately. Even in her nightgown, it was evident that the poor woman was a shifter with a big problem.

Her limbs were lean, covered with a kind of light, downy hair. Her eyes were wolfen, but her muzzle had stopped shy of extending to its full glory. The ears were just barely pointed, and sat stubbornly just by her temples, without rising all the way to the fully shifted position. She was stuck mid-shift—not her best look.

“Holy cow,” Kelly breathed, eschewing her usual expletive. “How the hell did this happen?”

“What can I say,” the half-wolf shrugged. “My ex was a mage, not to mention one spiteful son of a bitch. To be fair, if I had managed to make it all the way, I’d probably have taken him apart, so…”

She let the implication hang, and Kelly couldn’t help thinking that the guy probably deserved it if he was willing to leave someone he once loved like this.

“What do you think, Miss Holloway?” Owyn's eyes were locked on her, almost in challenge. “It’s not much of a curse, really.”

“Hey!” Clearly, the stuck shifter disagreed.

“Relatively speaking,” Owyn conceded, only slightly smoothing over the offense. He turned all of his attention back to Kelly. “This is the only real test for this kind of thing. Field work.”

Kelly swallowed hard, then nodded at him. It would be her first time working on a living subject. Except for Ronun, of course, but since he'd been stone at the time, she wasn’t sure if that counted. She settled on the bed next to the mixed-up creature.

“Wait a second,” the woman protested. “I thought I was getting the attention of Owyn Stahagan, not some student driver!”

“I’m here to clean things up if she makes a mess. Now, Kelly?”

“Can I have your hands?” Kelly asked.

The woman glared at Owyn, then huffed and reached over. Again, Kelly felt the low tingle in her palms, then she scrunched her eyes shut. This was something a bit bigger than giving vision to some defunct piece of bone. This was someone with a genuine curse that needed genuine breaking.

Searching hard, she combed through the information filtering into her, searching for the exact parameters of the curse. Just how far did it reach? If she knew the words that had cast it, that would be an immense help.

“Can I get a clue?” she asked, peeking through one eye at her implacable boss.

He stood stoic, which she took as a great big negatory. She was on her own on