Witch In Charge - Celia Kyle Page 0,41

urge to break the silence. She was learning that Owyn liked long, contemplative pauses. If she interrupted his quiet time, it tended to put him in a bad mood. It wasn’t easy for her to keep her mouth shut, but she let her eyes wander over the treasures on display around campus and found her mind was more than occupied.

He headed straight to his desk, gesturing for Kelly to join him. He had a small stack of files and Kelly was worried her new work would simply be a new form of filing.

“It looks like you have a real talent in breaking curses,” Owyn said as he shuffled through the papers on his desk. “Especially people being turned into something they aren’t supposed to be. I have a few cases like that and I want you to help me look at them.”

“Really? Great!”

She was interested, very much so. She also felt like she had just paddled out of the shallow end of the pool and she was now treading water, waiting for the final bit of weight to be added that would sink her.

Owyn handed her a stack of files. “Take a look. It’s not often that someone dares to curse a dragon, so this is a tough case. In the files there, you’ll see all the possible variables, as well as basic information about our victim. His name’s Spencer Reed and he’s an investigator here at Othercross Judiciary.”

Kelly scanned the files, getting more confused by the minute.

“There’s so much information in here,” she grumbled. “Why do we have his favorite food in both human and dragon form? How is that relevant?”

Owyn waggled a finger and gave her a stern look. “Curse breaking is not as simple as a big ‘poof’ and then everything goes back to the way it was before. Sometimes you can break the main part of the curse, but affect other things and you can actually make the situation worse, if you aren’t aware of all the variables.”

“Wow.” She shook her head, wondering how many variables Ronun’s curse might have.

“Sometimes the person casting the curse will include something specific. For example, a certain family member has to use a certain spell to break it. That corrects everything the second the cure is performed, but it’s usually finding those specifics that causes the problem.”

“Hmmm,” she murmured, as though she understood a word he'd said. “This is a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.”

“Good. I’m glad to see you’re taking this seriously. Spencer is a good friend of ours and we want to help him as much as we can. The witch who cursed him must have been very powerful. She and her partner were running from him after a jewelry heist—they were real Bonnie and Clyde types. To protect her dragon boyfriend, she cursed Spence so that when he tries to shift, he can only turn into a Komodo dragon.”

Kelly winced as she put the papers down. “That must be terrible for him.”

“It is.”

Owyn was quiet for a moment and Kelly realized he was worried about his friend. It occurred to her that he may be asking for her help with this because he didn’t trust himself to see straight. It was kind of sweet.

“Hello?” There was a light knock on the door and Owyn waved, welcoming his friend.

“Hi Spence,” Owyn said. “I’ve got a circle set up there in chalk and we’ll have at it in a sec.”

“That sounds encouraging,” he said with a frown.

Kelly gave him her best winning smile and to her relief, he returned it. He was quite handsome, and was dressed simply in slacks and a white shirt, a bit more casual than Owyn.

“I’m going to help tonight, if that’s okay.” She crossed the room to shake his hand and smiled encouragingly. “I promise I won’t turn you into a frog.”

“A frog might be better for my dignity,” he muttered. “Anything but a lizard! I’ve dealt with that my whole life. Anyone that wants to insult a dragon throws ‘lizard’ around. I can’t even complain about it now, because I actually am a goddamn lizard!”

“Oh, it’s okay.” Kelly tried to reassure him. “Komodo dragons are pretty badass.”

“To someone who can’t shift, maybe. Sure, they can bring down full-size elk and they poison with their bite. I get it. But I’m a dragon. A lizard has a primitive mind. He just wants to drag himself along like a sloth, bask in the sun, and eat bugs and shit. As a