Free Witch Is The New Black by Dakota Cassidy Page A

he asked, astonished.
    She gave him a sheepish look. “Well, there’s police testimony, too.”
    “I’m confused.”
    Hah. “You should be me.”
    “Did you have an attorney during this?”
    “Nope. Things never got that far. One minute I was processed and in a holding cell, the next, Baba Yaga swept in, snatched me up while the Boston PD watched, took me to that place that’s hauntingly like the Salem Witch Trials I saw reenacted on TV—”
    “The Council?”
    She snapped a finger in the air. “Guys with no faces and smelly robes, sitting behind an imposingly tall thingy with this electrical hum for a backbeat?”
    He chuckled, deep and low. “That’s them.”
    “Right. BY took me to the Council and they sentenced me.”
    “Without a trial?”
    “Without a word. The guys with no faces aren’t big on conversation, I hear.”
    “So let me get this straight. Baba took you from human jail and sentenced you with no trial to magic-abuse prison, and you didn’t at least protest ?”
    Right, because she could have gotten a word in edgewise while Baba was waving around her gavel and trying to keep her neon-pink leg warmers from poking out beneath her judge’s robe. She’d been petrified. Not that she’d admit that to Ridge.
    “To whom?”
    “As a witch, you have the right to a fair trial, Bernie. It’s just like human trials. You could have called sanctuary and they would have had to give you the time to find representation.”
    Another word she’d have to add to her witch thesaurus. “Sanctuary? Look, I don’t know what any of that means. I just know it wasn’t like I could have googled witch lawyers. I didn’t have time to do anything. It all happened pretty quickly.”
    He rubbed his hand over his jaw, now littered with delicious stubble, so late in the day. “I can’t believe you didn’t demand sanctuary.”
    Had she had any idea sanctuary existed, she might have called it—or uncle—or whatever. But of all the people she didn’t want to protest her witchiness to, it was Ridge. It rang false the more she said it, and she recognized that well enough to continue to play this game.
    Lifting her shoulders, she pretended nonchalance. “While I was pretty good at English in high school, I stunk at history. I didn’t think about calling anything at the time, I guess. Besides, they caught me red-handed. What else was there to do but let ’em slap the cuffs on me?”
    Now his stare was intense and off-putting. “Okay, fair enough. But you do know you can always ask for a retrial, don’t you? I can’t fathom why Baba would railroad you the way she did without allowing you time to summon someone from the realm to represent you, but she broke the law. And despite what she tells you about being the baddest leader in the land, she still has to adhere to our laws—even if some of them are ancient.”
    She was still stuck on the words “realm” and “summon”. But if she asked what they meant, she was stewed.
    Flapping her hands, Bernie rolled her eyes. “Summoning someone from the helm wasn’t worth it. I told you, they had a police testimony of my crime. I was an easy conviction.”
    “Realm.”
    “What?”
    His eyes grew suspicious and dark. “It’s called the realm . You summon representation from the realm.”
    Bernie nodded as if she knew what the hell he was talking about. “Right. Sorry. I’m crappy at remembering definitions and terms. Besides, the testimony is all the proof even a human court would need. I’ve done the ten months, it’s not like I can get them back, right? Anyway, none of that matters now. What matters now is getting out of here before I get into trouble.”
    “You won’t get into trouble, Bernie,” he rumbled, his voice deep and mesmerizing.
    Now she was growing uncomfortable. Not in a bad way. No, in fact, Ridge made her want to spill her stupid guts. But it would ruin everything. He’d mock her the same way everyone else had when they’d discovered she