Witch's Bell Book One

immediately. 'You feel terrible and you look worse.'
    'But what am I meant to do? Just lie here?' Ebony's mind couldn't begin to adjust to the zero possibilities that presented themselves to her. Lying in bed all day without any magic sounded like a death sentence. Well, not quite a death sentence, Ebony reminded herself quickly.
    'Yeah, you lie there,' Nate crossed his arms and looked down at her, as if daring her to jump out of bed. 'You need to recover. Now, I know you're new to this whole non-magical world, but when us humans are knocked down, we need to rest for a bit.'
    She shook her head petulantly. 'No way. I know that saying: when you're knocked down, you get back up again.'
    Nate smiled through his teeth. 'Yep, but it doesn't tell you when to get back up again. Don't worry, Ebony, you will get up, and then race around in your usual sugar-filled craze. But it's just going to take time.'
    Ebony felt a strange pang at the way Nate had said her name, but she dismissed it with a loud and obvious sniff. 'I don't know how you humans manage it.'
    'We humans,' Nate corrected her, 'for the next twenty-eight days, you're going to be just like me and Ben.'
    'You mean I have to wear a tie, and scratch my crotch when I think no one's looking?' she asked, a cheeky smile spreading across her lips, despite the cutting pain from her shoulder.
    Ben snorted. Nate just shook his head.
    'Okay, fine,' Ebony adjusted her hair, making sure its length tapered off the pillow to one side, 'I accept the challenge. I'll be a human for a lunar month. But I'm warning you, I'll do a better job than you do.'
    'You're on,' Nate uncrossed his arms and nodded his head.
    At that moment, Ben got a call. He snapped his phone open, answering it quickly as he walked out of the room.
    It left just the two of them, Ebony realized after a long moment.
    That silence came back, but it was different now. Without her magic, Ebony couldn't tell why or how it was different – all she knew was that for some reason, it was... and that somehow it was important.
    'Whose desk am I going to sit at?' she said after a while, arching an eyebrow and trying to sound as sassy as possible. But whether it was due to her new non-magical status, or something else, Ebony couldn't quite manage her usual aloof tone.
    'It depends if you want to sit on anyone's lap,' Nate said, face blank.
    Ebony sucked in her lips and just looked at him askance. 'I think the police department would frown upon that.'
    'Oh it wouldn't be mine,' Nate kept his easy, blank expression going. Ebony was starting to think that he must have trained as an actor, judging by the impossible cool he'd sometimes assume while teasing her. And yet at other times, the frustration would break through the surface, furrowing his brow and drawing at his lips. The only possible analogy Ebony could come up with was that Detective Nate had a lot of masks, for just one face.
    'It would probably be Frank's lap,' Nate continued.
    Ebony rolled her eyes. Frank was as old and brittle as bone left out in the desert. He was still on the force because he was a juggernaut when it came to filing, and could remember the criminal history of Vale better than any one of Ebony's books. Still, the reason Frank could remember so much about Vale was that he'd been there for most of it. The guy was practically pushing eighty. 'If I sat on Frank's lap, I'd break it,' she said coldly, trying to lift her chin, even though she was lying down.
    'Your words, not mine. But are you calling yourself fat?'
    'I would curse you, you little-' Ebony said through gritted teeth.
    'But you can't,' Nate shrugged. 'That's the thing about being human, no hexes.'
    'Don't worry, I'll just remember,' she used her good hand to tap the side of her temple. 'And as for whose desk I'll sit at, well, I'll sit wherever I want when all you detectives are out of the office,' she stretched her good arm and smiled.
    The Detective's jaw dropped slightly.
    'I wouldn't leave any doughnuts, coffee, or anything else at all sitting on your desk, if I were you,' she kept up her smile. 'I've heard Frank gets peckish these days.'
    But before Nate could reply, Ben walked back into the room. 'The color is back in your cheeks, Eb,' he announced happily. 'You're looking more and more like yourself with every moment.'
    More and more like herself? Ebony tried to blink back the shudder. She was less like herself – she had no magic, no point, no power – any yet somehow she still