Page 11 of Outlaw Witch

But I can charm or schmooze anyone. Normally, at least.

Fine. Out of the three of us: me, Z and Fabian, our leader, I’m the charming one. The one with the smooth moves and slick tongue.

Which makes me sound like a gross snake.

... Maybe I’m not as smooth as I think.

Iamcompared to the other two though, that’s what I’m trying to say. Fab’s got the whole nerdy and controlled vibe down, but he’s too busy running our corner of the world to take advantage of or notice when people are speaking to him. Flirting seems to go straight over his head.

And Z just scares the shit out of everyone. He’s built like a brick shithouse and is a whirlwind of barely concealed emotion. He’s my best friend. Has been since we were preteens. We learned about girls and discovered jerking off at the same time.

Not at theexactsame time, but you get what I’m saying.

Still, he sometimes freaks me out.

He’s one fucking intense dude. Most people walk around with their emotions on mute, but Z has his turned up to eleven all the damn time.

“She should be home, though, right? If you’d just had a near-death experience, you’d go home and snuggle with all your blankies and stuffies and everything, wouldn’t you? In fact, you’d come straight back to the apartment and demand I cuddle you until you felt better.”

Z shoots me a glare that could curdle milk.

Okay, maybe that’s more like what I’d do, minus the stuffies. I definitely wouldn’t run away from the person who swooped in to save me.

“Let’s make it quick,” Z huffs. “I’m afraid of catching something mold-related if we spend too much time in that hovel.”

I snort. “You might not want to say that out loud. We’re meant to be wooing the witch, remember? Getting her onside?”

Z just grunts, which I take as his agreement as we head for the car.

That’s what we need after all.

We’ve been searching for someone to help Fabian for months now and came up with nothing. It’s not like we don’t have a wide network of contacts, either. The Nexus District—the area we run—is well known for being able to find information about just about anyone. We can do pretty much anything that teeters on the morally gray side.

Except at this moment, when we need the right connections, so fucking bad. They’ve failed us.

Until now.

Until we discovered Silver No-last-name. A witch from the Salvage Yards, a part of the city I didn’t even know people lived in.

A witch with one of the rarest types of magic out there. Blood magic.

I don’t know how she’s stayed under the radar for so long, how we didn’t find her immediately after we started the search.

I don’t really care.

We don’t need her life story or her secrets.

We just need her help.

Twenty minutes later, and we’re arriving at the old industrial estate where the witch lives. We had to park our car about half a mile away and walk the rest, since Z refused to go any closer. He was convinced we’d come back to it gutted, and I can’t say I didn’t have similar thoughts.

Eyeing the lot, with its cracked concrete and smashed windows, trash and broken glass everywhere, I suck in a deep breath. The wind changes and I smell something both chemical and noxiously sweet in the air.

If I’m not mistaken, someone’s brewing some Purple Haze around here. One of the most popular magically-infused drugs on the market.

Maybe Z’s suggestion about what Silver was doing in the coven house wasn’t so off-base.

“Be careful,” Z mutters. “If they’re brewing that shit around here, there’s every chance they’re all going to be off their tits on it. High off their own supply and all that.”

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