Answering the Cercel Witch’s question is tricky. I settle for taking my suit jacket back and folding it over my arm. As she shoves my inadequacies in my face…but then again, she’s just another in an exceptionally long line of witches to do so.

Every single one of them asks me the same question. ‘Why?’ None of them ever get an answer, and it’s not because I don’t want to. It’s because my station binds me to silence. Were I to do what I felt was proper and beat the ever living shit out of each and every witch abuser and rapist I see in the streets, the trust I’ve garnered with he populous would be lost. I’d be ‘soft’, and I’d lose the ability to help the few I can.

Do I believe Witches should be bound? Of course. Not doing so, in my opinion, is like having a human’s Nuclear weapon unguarded. It’s a disservice to the masses. However, they are still intelligent creatures, and do not deserve to be treated as vermin as popular vote suggests.

“Miss Cercel, that is not my position. It is always my hope that each Witch I catch goes to a home that would treat her with intelligence and respect. However, when a witch is placed, the person who takes charge of her, under our admittedly archaic laws is free to punish a witch as they see fit.”

“Then why not fight to fix it,” the irritation in her voice is enough that a few of my people turn and look at her wide-eyed before casting a gaze up to me curiously as if to wonder why I am not taking a page from their books and giving her one across the mouth for her insubordination. “Collar or no collar, they’ll start to fight back if you don’t do something about it.”

I stare down the last of the on-lookers, getting them to turn and speed walk away before I bid Miss Cercel to continue walking with a hand to guide her in the direction of the registrar’s office. She keeps out of range of touch but speeds off in the correct direction, moving just quick enough that I have to lengthen my gait to keep pace with her.

“It is my hope,” I whisper, “things change before then without too much loss of life.”

“Be the change you want to see, Red Eyes,” she sighs, “or however that quote goes.”

“Building coming up on the right, please,” I say simply. She’s not wrong—I concluded: ‘be the change’, some time ago. I just don’t need to out myself for brownie points.

Miss Cercel stops outside the door with he words ‘registrar’ on the door, her arms folded in a manner I was more likely to see on a school yard than on a woman in her twenties.

The door opens easily for us and Leena Corcoran, a little blonde banshee that just started at the office a few weeks prior looks up at us expectantly:

“Trouble finding the office Mr. Ayers?” She quips and strikes her computer’s keys a little harder than necessary logging in.

“Now, Leena, just because you’ve got a busier weekend than I do doesn’t mean you need to be rude.” I smile, turning up the charm for her. I would never be interested a girl barely in her twenties, but I need to be able to work amicably with Leena—she’s one of the few who is trusted with ‘the list’.

It’s a database, really. The only reason it’s called the ‘list’ is because it used to be kept longhand on an unending parchment. Though it’s all in binary, now, the ‘list’ just stuck.

“You’re not as cute as you think, Mr. Ayers…plus I don’t need Zion murdering me in my sleep…knock it off.”