He shrugged. “You’re the one who put me under the gun to find some place safe with the Favor. You try suffocating and making wise decisions.”
Guilt stole away her anger. “Is the Favor still choking you?” she asked. But then, as always, she remembered him trying to kill her.
“No. Only right before I lost consciousness. The Favor seems paid now that we’re here,” he said casually.
She frowned. “Do you do that a lot? Pass out?” Had she trapped a defective witch?
He looked at her funny. “Why? Are you worried about me?”
Gentry closed her eyes in pure annoyance. They were getting off topic. “We need to get out of here.”
Kit’s scarred lips thinned as he looked at the homey kitchen and kids with a longing that she recognized: homesickness. “Agreed,” he said finally, “where do you want to go?”
He’s agreeing too easily,the paranoid part of Gentry whispered. Manipulation was an old friend of hers, and she recognized it when she saw it. But she had too much to do to let some witch’s plans slow her down. “Skadra. We need to get to Skadra undetected.” The request wasn’t as easy as it sounded; the city tracked all visitors religiously to keep government informants out.
The witch smiled yet there was a bitterness to it. “That’s easy. Nona’s taking all the older kids on a field trip to Skadra tomorrow. We’ll just hitch a ride.”
ten
Kit
The small school bus had aged in the ten years since Kit had last boarded it. The leather seats had cracked and its white exterior was tinged yellow from too many trips into the desert — a fact that greatly depressed him.
Everything had been low and dull when they’d boarded the bus that morning. A babysitter (a witch from the community whom he recognized) sat on the porch as the younger children said goodbye to the aged-out children with loud wails and temper tantrums. For this cycle, Nona had seven children to take on the field trip — two boys and three girls whom he didn’t recognize and then little Benny and Amelia. It hurt his heart to see them in their seats, their chests puffed out as they would finally get to explore the fabled Skadra all their schoolmates gushed about. They’d been babies when he’d aged out and they remembered him because of the extensive photo albums Nona liked to keep.
Only one boy had the good sense to cry when the bus backed out of the orphanage and onto the country road. He hugged his overstuffed backpack as his shoulder shook.
“What’s going on?” Gentry whispered to him vehemently. “Something’s wrong. Really wrong.”
His former target had chosen to not mingle with the little witches. A choice that he figured was purposeful from the hateful way she looked at him and the horrified look on her face when she’d figured out what they were. The woman clearly hated witches with all her heart. Which made it all the more surprising when she’d chosen to sit next to him for the ten-hour bus ride.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” he murmured back. “You’re getting to Skadra. Isn’t that good enough?”
She wrinkled her nose, making her full cheeks even fuller. “Not if it means these kids are going to turn into assassins like you. They’re kids. Is that where you guys are dropping them off? Some assassin witchy boot camp?”
Somehow, how she’d misunderstood the situation amused him.So she’s a witch hater, but a witch hater withstandards.It all seemed very dignified and skewed from his viewpoint. She was a proud creature, one with rules, that much he’d gotten over the last twenty-four hours. Which was good, considering he needed to trick the Favors away from her so he could save Visha. A proud fool he could work with. “First off, I’mnotan assassin. Second, Nona is doing her best by these kids, not that it’s any of your business. You should try running an orphanage with so many mouths to feed. She’s a miracle worker.”A miracle worker with finite means, he revised in his head. He changed the subject. “What is it you want in Skadra, Gentry? You’re best off taking a charter boat to one of those purist colonies.” The purist colonies pre-tested their pregnancies for the witch gene and terminated those who tested positive. It was all very civilized, less messy than it was here on the mainland.
Gentry gave him a very tired look. “How does that change my situation? I’m cursed. I want out of it.”
Kit scoffed, “Everybody knows soul bonds are permanent.”
“Oh just like how you knew how a Favor worked? Excuse me, but I’m not exactly considering you an expert on magic after I, a poor helpless magic-less girl, outsmarted you with it.” She snarked, her voice rising to the point where he saw Nona peer at them from her rearview mirror.
Nosy old bat,he thought. He was just about to retort, to remind Gentry that he was the one with magic thank you very much, and that the Favor had just been a very lucky fluke, when the girl went pale and still. Still like death.
He went on high alert, standing to peer out all the windows as they were still bumping down an empty desert highway. There were no nearby vehicles, no witches pacing alongside the bus on brooms. Next he checked the seats. All the kids were accounted for, and there was no residual magic floating in the air. They weren’t under attack. Then finally he placed a palm over a silent Gentry’s head.
Magic, malevolent and powerful, bit his palm. Hissing, he retracted it.
“Gentry?!” Alarmed, he grabbed her by the hand. “It’s here, isn’t?”
Sure enough, blood bloomed underneath the girl’s sleeve, and soon dripped onto the leather of the bus seat.
“Oh. That is a lot,” Gentry said loopily as Kit forced the blood-slicked sleeve back to reveal a gnarly long cut bisecting Gentry’s forearm. Gentry looked away from it. “Not sure how looking at it helps, witch. Heal me with your magic.”
He was already putting his palm near the wound. The foreign magic was gone, but the cut was deep enough that her tendon was exposed, and he was absolute shit at healing magic. “I can’t heal that,” he admitted, “wrap it tight and Nona can take the exit to the closest hospital. Nona!” He raised his voice just enough and caught his former caretaker’s eye. She stopped the bus immediately.
“No. We can’t do that. That’s what he wants,” Gentry gritted out. She kept her face down as if she wanted to hide her expression. “That’s why he did it.”
