Witches Incorporated Read online

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Karen Miller

  Excerpt from The Innocent Mage copyright © 2007 by Karen Miller All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Orbit

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  Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group. The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

  First eBook Edition: July 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-316-07794-1

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  EXTRAS

  MEET THE AUTHOR

  WIZARD SQUARED

  A PREVIEW OF "THE INNOCENT MAGE"

  PROLOGUE

  He looked up again. “Do I have to sign right now, or do I get some time to think about it? And, you know, read the fine print.”

  Sir Alec frowned. “Six months isn’t long enough for cogitation, Mister Dunwoody? Or are you having second thoughts?”

  The ghost of Lional, whispering in his ear. They’re so frightened of you, Gerald, they can hardly spit.

  “No, no, it’s not that. I just—well, you know what they say. Never sign a document you haven’t read at least twice.”

  Sir Alec just looked at him.

  Oh, blimey. Gerald stared at the contract again. At his black-and-white future. The years stretched ahead of him, full of danger and duty. Deception and lies. Loneliness. Fear.

  Full of doing the right thing. Full of making amends. Full of Lionals who have to be stopped. The dead must be honored… and you gave them your word.

  He signed.

  Praise for The Accidental Sorcerer:

  “Mills’ whimsical prose keeps the plot jumping and the reader laughing.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[A series] that promises plenty of action in this intriguing world with its magical technology and bureaucracy run rampant.”

  —Locus

  “A world that’s magical, yet believable, and great fun to read.”

  —Romantic Times

  By Karen Miller

  Kingmaker, Kingbreaker

  The Innocent Mage

  The Awakened Mage

  The Godspeaker Trilogy

  Empress

  The Riven Kingdom

  Hammer of God

  The Fisherman’s Children

  The Prodigal Mage

  Writing as K. E. Mills

  Rogue Agent trilogy

  The Accidental Sorcerer

  Witches Incorporated

  Wizard Squared

  To the Orbit Sales Team,

  who work so hard on their authors’ behalf.

  CHAPTER ONE

  According to Department records, the property was known as Establishment 743-865-928/Entwhistle.

  Gathered in smoky mess hall corners, inhaling a quick cig—or a pipe, if they were particular—Sir Alec’s senior janitors, his most hard-bitten secret agents, called it “the haunted house.” Rolling their eyes when they said it. Sort of joking. But mostly not. Never elaborating; why should they? Nobody had warned them. Nobody gave them a heads-up the day before they faced final assessment. They’d sunk or swum, no half-measures. And no help. What do you reckon, Dunwoody? You reckon you deserve any different, just because someone’s told you you’re the bee’s thaumaturgical knees? Sink or swim, mate. That’s how it works. That’s how the pretenders get shuffled out of the pack. If you’re as good as they say you are, well… you’ll be laughing, won’t you?

  Shrouded in a damp early morning mist, deep in the wilds of rural Ottosland, Gerald wasn’t feeling particularly amused. Cold? Yes. Apprehensive? Certainly. Beginning to wonder if he’d made a mistake? Without question. But really not in the mood for a giggle.

  I wish Reg was here. Or Monk. Melissande, even. At this point I’d probably throw my arms around Rupert, butterflies and all.

  But he squashed the thought a heartbeat after it formed. The first rule he’d made for himself upon entering janitorial training was No pining. Yes, he missed his friends but he’d see them again sooner or later. He’d already seen Monk once. A work-related visit, to be sure, no social niceties allowed, but still. It proved he wasn’t languishing in permanent exile.

  He just wished the situation with his parents was equally straightforward. Returned at long last from gallivanting around the world, they couldn’t understand why he kept putting off a visit and was so vague about his new employment and why he’d given up on his last position as a royal court wizard. So prestigious, that had been. What had gone wrong this time? And when are we going to see you, son?

  “Sorry,” he kept saying in his letters. He’d phoned them once, but couldn’t bear to do that again. His mother’s tearful voice was enough to break him. “I’ll tell you all about New Ottosland soon, I promise. Just a bit busy now. You know how it is.”

  Except they didn’t know, and they never could. He’d have to lie to them. And once he did that—once he crossed that line—he could never cross back, which meant something precious would be irreparably broken. Too much in his life, in himself, had changed of late. While his parents’ backs were turned he’d become some dark, unfathomable stranger… and he knew he couldn’t trust himself not to let them see it. It was still too soon.

  They’d have to be lied to eventually, of course. He knew that. He did. Just… not yet.

  Abruptly aware of stinging eyes and ragged breathing, Gerald shook his head sharply. Enough, Dunnywood. There was no point working himself into a state over what couldn’t be helped. For better or worse he’d chosen this new life. This… penance. That meant living with the consequences.

  Time to focus on the job at hand.

  Which right here, right now, was surviving till supper. Because one of Sir Alec’s senior janitors, a pale, bruised-looking chap by the name of Dalby—well, this week, anyway—had confided over a mug of stewed tea that the Department property’s name-tag designation had a habit of changing. Whenever, rumour whispered, the house claimed a new victim. Today it was tagged Entwhistle. Tomorrow it might be… well, it might be known as Dunwoody. You never know, eh?

  Gerald tucked his cold-nipped fingers into his armpits and bounced on his toes to keep his sluggish blood moving. That’s right. You never know. Life is full of surprises. And some of them, it turned out, were more palatable than others.

  But he wasn’t going to think about that, e
ither. What was the point? He’d done what he’d done and he was who he’d become. Regret and remorse could change none of it. If the last tumultuous, exhausting and unexpected six months of his life had taught him nothing else, they’d taught him that one biting, bitter lesson.

  Instead, he peered through the impassable, imposing wrought-iron gates before him, up the long straight driveway to the house, trying to make out more than a few haphazard chimney pots and a vague hint of higgledy-piggledy gables. No luck. But whether that was because he was blind in one eye or because the autumnal mist was just too thick or because the house was protected by some kind of deflection incant, he couldn’t tell.

  Towering oak trees on either side of the gates dripped moisture like a leaking tap, plink plink plink on his hatless head and coated shoulders. The water trickled nastily between skin and shirt-collar, all the way down his spine to the waistband of his trousers. Beneath his feet, the gravel was muddy and rutted. Fading into the distance the muffled clip-clop of hooves and the creak of wooden wheels as the cart that had deposited him here returned to the railway station.

  Otherwise, the surrounding countryside was quiet. Too quiet. Not a cock-crow, not a bleating lamb. No dog barked. No milch cow lowed. He could hear his heart thudding sullenly against his ribs. That was nerves. Because here he was in far-flung, bucolic Finkley Meadows, and all his hopes, dreams and fears were come down to this.

  Testing time.

  Tucked beneath his overcoat, in the pocket of his jacket, was a single folded sheet of paper, decorated with precise spiky writing in plain black ink. Time to pay the piper, Mister Dunwoody. Finkley Meadows. The 8th, at dawn. Someone will meet you on the platform. Sir Alec. A one-way railway token had accompanied the missive.

  He remembered thinking: So is the Department merely being fiscally responsible, or should I take the hint and give up while I still can?

  But of course he’d accepted the invitation. The challenge. Reg would never forgive him if he tucked his tail between his legs and ran.

  So all right. I’m here. I’m ready to be tested.

  Except the property’s daunting front gates were hexed shut, and he couldn’t pin down the incant. Slippery and insubstantial, like melting soap at the bottom of the bathtub, it teased the edges of his awareness. Taunted his newfound, newly-honed expertise. He tried till he sweated but he couldn’t lay a finger on it. The gates remained stubbornly, unbelievably closed.

  “Damn!”

  Blowing out a short, frustrated breath he glared at them, and then at the stone wall they were hinged onto. Intimidatingly tall, patchworked with moss and choking ivy, he had no hope of climbing over it. Of course, he could fly over the bloody thing if he dared risk a levitation incant on himself. But levitation incants, like the speed-em-up hex, like any kind of thaumaturgy which altered the properties of living tissue, were strictly off limits. If he tried one, and something went wrong, being caught breaking the law would be the least of his worries. Being buried in something no bigger than an egg cup was a far more likely outcome.

  So. Scratch that bright idea.

  Did whoever was in the house even know he’d arrived? He hadn’t a clue. Nor did there seem to be any way of communicating with the distant, fog-shrouded establishment. No crystal ball, not even a boring, ordinary telephone. Of course, he could always shout…

  Honestly, this was ridiculous.

  He blew out another breath. Then, surrendering to temper, he wrapped his fingers around the gates’ wrought-iron bars and shook. “Come on! Let me in! I’m catching pewmonia out here!”

  Nothing. The gates’ locking incant buzzed fuzzily through his gloves. Fuzzily…

  “Oh!” he exclaimed. “You idiot, Gerald.”

  With a fingersnap and a single command he deactivated the anti-etheretic shield that stifled his unique thaumic imprint. Wearing the wretched thing was a bit like enduring faulty earplugs. He wasn’t thaumaturgically deaf, not exactly, but he was definitely compromised. No wonder he couldn’t get past the hexed gates. He hated the shield, and had said so, forcibly, but nobody would listen. In the end he’d taken his complaints to Sir Alec. Softly-spoken and blandly nondescript, the man lurked in the shadows of every Department conversation. As though he could see through walls and read thoughts from a distance. Even when he was absent, his presence at janitorial headquarters was inescapable. He was the absolute, ultimate authority.

  But Sir Alec hadn’t had any sympathy either.

  “Mister Dunwoody,” he’d said, his pale grey eyes severe, “stop wasting my time. Your identity must remain obscure and so far that shield is the best method we can contrive. So you’ll not put one toe in public without first activating your thaumic obfuscator, is that clear? The last thing we need is anybody noticing you.”

  And of course, Sir Alec was right. Janitorial agent Gerald Dunwoody couldn’t afford to stand out in any way. Which was also why Monk had devised a nifty little incant that turned his silvered blind eye brown again. The change wasn’t permanent; even with Monk’s best efforts it wore off after five hours or so, but it was easily reapplied. And with both incants activated he could pass muster as the old Gerald Dunwoody, with two normal-looking eyes and a lousy Third Grade thaumic signature.

  The good old days.

  With the shield-incant cancelled he could feel his muffled senses coming alive again. Feel the ebb and flow of the ether, fluctuations in the thaumic currents. He could feel his rogue powers, simmering gently beneath his ordinary surface.

  Ever since joining Sir Alec’s department—whenever he wasn’t studying the complicated rules of domestic and foreign thaumaturgic policing and how to apply them without creating fourteen different kinds of international incident—he’d cautiously explored his newfound abilities. So far he’d not met a First Grade incant he couldn’t master: something that had him swinging wildly between elation and trepidation. One minute he was awash with heart-pounding apprehension—nobody should have this much power, not even me—and the next he was terrified he’d wake up to find it vanished and himself returned to unremarkable mediocrity.

  He was still waiting for that pendulum to stop.

  And then there was the dizzying parade of mysterious Department experts who came to examine him, who’d smiled vaguely, politely, and said, “Call me Doc.” They’d poked him and prodded him, run test after test, pulled faces and gone away again, never bothering to share their findings with their subject. He’d hated it, hotly resenting being kept in the dark. He was the one being poked and prodded, wasn’t he? Jumped through hoops like a dog at the circus? He had a right to know exactly who and what he was, didn’t he?

  No. Apparently he didn’t. Not according to Sir Alec, anyway, whose continued lack of sympathy had been chilling… if not entirely unexpected.

  “It’s not a question of us wanting to control you, Mister Dunwoody,” Sir Alec said briskly. “When the time’s right we’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

  “And when will that be?” he’d demanded. “I don’t think you understand what this is like. Knowing what I’m capable of. Knowing what’s ticking away inside me. Not knowing what I’m—you’re—we’re going to do about it.”

  Sir Alec had sat back in his leather armchair then, and shifted his pale grey gaze to stare through his office window at the dreary suburban street outside.

  “Well, I rather think that’s the crux of the problem, don’t you?” he asked, surprisingly mild. “You don’t know what you’re capable of, any more than we do. The truth is we’re still trying to figure you out.”

  “Oh,” Gerald said, taken aback. “So… what does that mean? Does it mean I can’t even be trusted as a janitor? That I’m stuck in this mausoleum for the rest of my life, performing tricks for visiting Department thaumaturgists?”

  “No, of course not,” Sir Alec retorted, and leaned forward with his elbows braced on his desk. “It’s not a question of trust. It’s a question of making sure we handle this unique situation properly. Mister Du
n-woody, I thought your experiences in New Ottosland would’ve made the danger obvious. King Lional wasn’t the only ambitious man in the world. There are other people—entire governments, actually—who, if they knew of your existence, might well go to quite dramatic lengths to get their hands on you.”

  It was like being doused with a bucket of ice-water. “Are you saying I’m some kind of target?”

  Sighing, Sir Alec sat back again. “I’m saying this is a game full of hypothetical scenarios. I’m saying one of the things I get paid to do is dream up potential disasters and then concoct ways of preventing—or in the worst case, surviving—them. But the operative word here is hypothetical. Really, Mister Dunwoody, you must not be an alarmist.”

  “I’ll stop if you stop,” he retorted. “I agreed to join your team so I could do some good in the world, not sit around in basements giving thaumic contabulators hysterics.”

  “One step at a time, Mister Dunwoody,” said Sir Alec, infuriatingly bland. “If we’re to teach you how to protect the world and its innocents from nefarious individuals, first we must fully understand what makes you tick. So you need to be patient. Let us complete our investigation. When that’s done, we can talk again.”

  Investigation. Sir Alec had made him sound like a—a crime. Although maybe that wasn’t such a poor choice of words. What had happened in New Ottosland… that had been criminal.

  Of course, in the end he’d swallowed his anger and frustration and suffered the Department’s endless, ongoing examinations. What other choice did he have? He had nowhere else to go. The government’s position had been made perfectly clear: rogue wizards were untidy. They couldn’t be left… lying about.