“You’re the only one.” His blood-red eyes held hers. “Which makes your testimony particularly valuable, Miss Wickwood. And your safety particularly precarious.”
“I don’t suppose I could plead the Fifth? Decline to testify on grounds of not wanting to be murdered?”
The Marshall’s smile revealed teeth like obsidian daggers. “Supernatural Court operates under different rules. Witness testimony is compelled by binding magic. You will answer every question put to you, truthfully and completely, whether you want to or not.”
“Of course I will.”
“A representative from Grimm, Malphas & Associates will contact you within twenty-four hours to coordinate your protection,” he continued.
She knew the name. Everyone in the supernatural world knew the name. Demon lawyers with a reputation for being absolutely ruthless and completely unbeatable. They’d prosecuted kings and kingmakers, brought down crime families that had operated for millennia, won cases that everyone said were impossible.
If they were handling prosecution, Viktor Blackwood was in serious trouble.
Which meant she was in serious trouble.
“The Blackwood family has considerable resources,” the Marshall said. His tone was carefully neutral, but his eyes held warning. “They have a long history of ensuring witnesses don’t survive to testify. The firm’s protection program is your best chance of reaching that courtroom alive.”
“And if I refuse protection? Try to handle this myself?”
“Then I’ll likely be serving your next of kin with notification of your death.” He adjusted his cuffs with clawed fingers.“The Blackwoods don’t leave loose ends, Miss Wickwood. In six hundred years, not a single witness has survived to testify against them without professional protection.”
“Six hundred years. That’s a lot of dead witnesses.”
“It’s a lot of reasons to accept help when it’s offered.”
He dissolved into smoke before she could respond, leaving only the scent of sulfur and a binding she’d carry until she testified or died.
Hazel closed the door and leaned against it. The subpoena glowed faintly in her hand, its binding magic already woven into her bones.
Twenty-one days. She had twenty-one days to survive the attention of a six-hundred-year-old crime family, testify in a court that would magically compel her to tell the truth about everything she’d witnessed, and somehow come out the other side alive.
She looked around her shop. The grimoires she’d inherited from her grandmother. The herbs she’d spent twenty years learning to cultivate. The careful life she’d built in the margins, quiet and safe and hers.
Tobias Ashford had tried to do the right thing, and now his daughters would grow up without a father. His wife would receive a settlement and a lie. His murderer would walk free unless someone stopped him.
Unless she stopped him.
Azrael wound around her ankles, fur sparking with protective magic. He didn’t say anything. For once, there was nothing to say.
Hazel slid down the door until she was sitting on the floor again.
Twenty-one days. The subpoena hummed against her palm.
She closed her eyes and let the shaking start.
2
Marcus Hawthorne had beena lawyer for four hundred and ninety-seven years. In that time, he’d represented fallen angels, brokered treaties between warring demon houses, and once argued a case before the Throne of Judgment itself.
He had never lost a witness.
He wasn’t about to start with a hedge witch from Maine.
Malphas’s corner office occupied the top floor of the firm’s Boston headquarters, its floor-to-ceiling windows offering a view of the harbor that most humans would find impressive. Marcus found it ostentatious. But then, Malphas had always enjoyed reminding visitors of his position.
“The Wickwood woman.” Malphas didn’t look up from the file spread across his obsidian desk. “She’s refused protection twice.”
“I’m aware.”
