2 Witch and Famous (15 page)

It was a coward’s way out, because it wouldn’t do anything to stop him killing there, yet even the thought of that hurt like someone was ripping my heart from my chest. I told it to stop, that exile was better than the alternative, and it made no difference. My heart was breaking. My lover was a murderer. How had I got to this point? How had I let things get this far? Would it have been easier if I had just let Rebecca and Evert kill him when I first found out what he was?

No, because then I would never have found out what
I
was. Although maybe my life would have been simpler that way too. I didn’t have the time to think about that now though. It was far too late for regrets. Now, I just needed to stop Niall from killing again.

First, I needed to find Niall. I didn’t waste time trying to scour the streets for him. I’d missed that chance. Instead, I headed right for his house, knowing that he would need to go back there. There was too much there for him to leave it behind. I latched onto the emotions of the crowd around me, using them to fuel a sprint across the city that I wouldn’t have thought possible until I did it.

Which meant that barely ten minutes later, I hammered on Niall’s front door hard enough that it splintered the wood. Marie opened the door and I shoved her out of the way, roughly enough that she stumbled.

“Where is he?”

“Elle, what are you doing? What’s wrong?”

“Where is he?” I demanded, and this time, I put every ounce of anger I could into it. Niall’s assistant quailed back, and there was a part of me that liked that, that said I should take that fear and swallow it, that I should feed and not stop feeding until there was nothing left of her but an empty husk.

“Elle, please. Niall isn’t even here.” I could feel the panic rising behind the words. Of course, Marie had been here before. She knew about this side of me. Had she known about that side of Niall, too? The only reason I didn’t pounce on her then was that it would make me no better than Niall was.

Besides, I could feel for myself that she was telling the truth. I would know if Niall were there in the house. Even so, I plunged deeper into the building, throwing open doors and moving through the rooms, wanting to make sure, looking for… I didn’t know what.

“Where did he go?” I asked as Marie followed me.

“I don’t know. What is this all about?”

I continued my path through the house, throwing open doors as I went.

“Elle, what are you doing? You can’t just—”

“Marie, I’m investigating a murder, and if I were you, I’d stay away from me right now.” I didn’t even have to use my power on her. She ran off, slamming the door to her office behind her. I heard it lock, for all the good that would do if I really wanted to get in. I could tear the lock away easily if I needed.

 Right then, I had other concerns.

“Niall!” I yelled and my own voice echoed back at me in the long hallway.

Why was I doing this? Why was I storming through the house so blindly? I didn’t know. Maybe I was hoping that I could find a clue as to where he might have gone? Maybe I was just looking for all those things that would show me I should have known he was a murderer all along. Maybe I didn’t know what I wanted.

Whatever the reason, I ended up in Niall’s art gallery. There weren’t as many pieces as there had been in there, thanks to the long-term loans I’d convinced him to make to the City Art Centre, but there were still a few. Modern sculptures on plinths, a few paintings. I had to fight the urge to pick up things and start smashing them, one by one, to feed something to my anger. The reason I didn’t was because I couldn’t do that to the art, not because I couldn’t do that to Niall.

Suddenly, I stopped in my tracks, my heart overruling my head. I stared at the plinth where we had first made love all those weeks ago, unable to even think as I stood there. I picked up the sculpture on it and I threw it, watching it splinter against the wall, tracing the arcs of the fragments. I still just felt… empty. I slumped against the plinth and sank to the floor, sitting there, waiting, my hopes as shattered as the pottery.

A lump rose in my throat as I tried to work out how I had been so stupid. As I tried to work out what I would say when Niall showed up. Niall would be back. He had to be. He wouldn’t abandon all this, would he? He wouldn’t abandon
me
, would he?

Yet, what if he did? What if he walked away without looking back? I’d been thinking of telling him to leave the city, but that felt so different than the idea of him just running away without even saying goodbye.

That was why I waited. I waited there for an hour or more, even after it became obvious that Niall wasn’t coming back to his home. I waited even though my phone was going off as people tried to get through to me, ignoring them on the basis that none of the callers was Niall. I waited even though a part of me knew he could be on a plane by now, leaving the country, leaving me.

That, or maybe the coven had gotten to him while I’d been sitting there, contemplating the tragedy that was my love life. Maybe he didn’t come because he couldn’t. Either way, I sat there. I was too shaken to even cry. Too stunned to know what the next step was. Niall had changed my life around completely. I’d assumed he would always be there, and now he wasn’t.

I waited until Marie came in with both Fergie and Siobhan following her. It wasn’t until I looked up at them through a blurred haze that I realized I had been crying.

“What are you doing here?” I asked them.

“Marie called me,” Fergie said. “She said that you’d broken down the door, pushed her, and barged in here looking for Niall. She said you were furious and you didn’t look like you were leaving anytime soon. She was scared of you. Frankly, Elle…what the hell is going on?”

I looked at Marie, her face tear-streaked with mascara. Somehow, I kept doing this to her. “I’m sorry, Marie.”

“If I understood, I might forgive you.” Marie paused after she said it, obviously expecting an explanation.

I sighed. “It’s kind of complicated. I’m sorry I lashed out. It…it’s Niall.”

“Did you
find
Niall?” Fergie asked. There was a carefully neutral note in his voice. He obviously wanted to help, but I could tell he didn’t like that I’d nearly attacked Marie again. What did I expect, given how much he clearly liked her?

I swallowed. “I found him earlier. He did it, Fergie. He actually did it.”

Fergie looked down at me in surprise and gave me a hand to help me up off the floor. “He confessed?”

“He didn’t have to. He was stalking Jessica’s girlfriend, and when I confronted him…”

“But he didn’t confess outright?” Fergie waved Siobhan forward. The young goblin looked pretty nervous about it—her eyes barely darted to the valuable artwork all around her—but she stepped forward. “Siobhan has something she needs to tell you.”

“Can’t it wait?” I demanded, standing taller now that I was off the floor.

Fergie shook his head. “You need to hear her out. I tried calling you, but you didn’t answer your phone.”

I was probably a little busy being shot at. That or watching my lover stalk someone. Even so, Fergie seemed to think that it was important, and while I might not trust the lawyer to be my backup in a fight, I knew he wouldn’t tell me to listen unless it was important.

“All right,” I said. I looked over at Siobhan. I couldn’t have looked very comforting, because the goblin shrank back slightly. “What is it?”

“I—I tried to tell you before, back at your office, but—”

“Just tell me,” I snapped, and had to stop myself from letting my anger slip any further. I tried to project an air of calm that I didn’t feel, not right then. “Come on, Siobhan. You can tell me anything.”

Siobhan still hesitated for a second. “There’s…there’s another enchantress.”

“What?” I’d grabbed Siobhan before I even realized what I was doing, half-lifting her off her feet by the collar of her hooded top.

“Another enchantress is in the city,” Siobhan managed. “Please, I tried to tell you.”

“Not very hard, you didn’t.” I shook her. “And what about when we met at Arthur’s Seat? You told me that it was just me and Niall. I asked you outright if there were any others like us, and you said no. You lied.”

“Stop this, Elle. She’s just a girl.” Fergie went to pull me away from Siobhan. It was a mistake. After everything that had happened to me today, it was about the worst mistake he could make. I threw a small fragment of what I was feeling into him and it was enough to bring him to a halt, fighting to keep from transforming under the stress.

“You lied to me,” I repeated to Siobhan. “The one time it really mattered, and you lied to me. You risked my life and Niall’s life.
You let me think he was a killer.”

I didn’t know what I was going to do in that moment. I could feel all the emotion in the room. I could always feel it, of course, but now it jumped and thrummed through me, as tight as a guitar string. All the fear. All the anger. All the resentment. I could feel the flickers of something more between Fergie and Marie, even while Fergie knelt there, struggling not to change.

I could feel Siobhan’s guilt eating at her belly. I could feel how scared she was of me and how much she wished that she had done the right thing earlier. Right then, I wanted to eat all of it. Days of running around the city full of anxiety and suspicion had left me starving. Thinking Niall was a murderer and now this had left me on a knife-edge. In that moment, a part of me wanted to swallow all of the emotion in the room and be done with it.

“Please don’t be angry,” Siobhan begged. “I couldn’t tell you. I
couldn’t.
They would have hurt Dougie.”

“Dougie? What does
this
have to do with Dougie?” I was furious that she had held back information from me. Furious enough that I didn’t want to hold back anymore. Siobhan had used up her chances.

She cried out in fear and that small sound stopped me, just for a moment. I wasn’t even sure why it should, when the rest hadn’t. Somehow though, it was enough to make me take a look around. Fergie was down on his knees, struggling for control. Siobhan shrank away from me as far as my grip would let her, terrified that I was going to kill her for lying. Marie was caught between the need to run from me and the need to go to Fergie. What was I doing? Why was I doing this to people I really cared about?

I knew why. Niall. The hurt of losing him. I wasn’t on a knife’s edge. I had stepped over it, and now I had to find a way to step back. I fought for control. I took the part of me that ached to swallow the emotions around me and I made it swallow my own anger. My own grief at what I’d done. I
made
myself step back from the edge, inch by hard fought inch.

I let go of Siobhan, turning to Fergie and pumping some of the last of my waning stock of energy into calming him down. Into giving him the kind of control that I barely had. Then I looked back to my goblin friend.

“Those bruises on your face the other day…”

Siobhan swallowed. “They were from the others, not from Dougie. They hit me when I told them that you’d been nice to me and that I couldn’t do this. When I said that I wouldn’t trick you. That you were my friend. She watched them. She said I deserved it. I…I did deserve it.”

I could feel the tangle of emotions coming up in Siobhan as she said that. She believed it, but she didn’t know why. She’d been made to believe it.

“She? This enchantress you didn’t tell me about?”

Siobhan nodded. “She made it seem… okay to keep her a secret from you. To do what she said.”

I didn’t shout now. If an enchantress had really asked her to do it…well, I knew that I could probably get Siobhan to do just about anything, if I tried hard enough. That thought took me another step back from my anger.

“I didn’t know,” Siobhan said. “I’m sorry. I had to. I have to. They still have Dougie. They said that if I did the wrong thing…
said
the wrong thing…they would…”

I could guess that part. “I understand, Siobhan. I’m sorry.”

“I wanted to tell you from the start. I tried to explain things to her. She told me that it was all right, and then…they hurt Dougie.”

Silvery tears sprang to Siobhan’s eyes, but she didn’t shed them. “And now, I’ve told you. If he dies, it’s my fault.”

Siobhan loved him. I knew that without having to ask. She loved him blindly, completely. Despite everything, despite the fact that I didn’t even like Dougie that much, I could understand that. I knew what it was like to love someone the rest of the world hated, even past the point where it seemed to make sense.

“No. It is not your fault,” I said. “But now, the only way to help Dougie is to give me as much information as possible. You need to tell me everything, Siobhan.”

She nodded and the tears spilled silently.

My anger almost completely deflated as I saw that. “Tell me about this other enchantress.”

“She’s been living down Underneath with us for a long time,” Siobhan said. “They say she used to live on the surface, but now, she prefers it with us. There are lots of us who…I guess they follow her. Treat her like she’s special. She’s kind of a leader. She makes it feel like…like it doesn’t matter that we’re trapped down there.”

Well, yes. An enchantress would have an easy enough time doing that. If she wanted, I had no doubt that an enchantress could have the goblins eating out of her hand. Although why she would want to enchant goblins when she could do the same thing with humans above ground was another question.

Right then though, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the feeling of one link in the chain of logic that had condemned Niall coming undone. Jessica Hammersmith had been killed by someone like me. I’d been so sure that had to be Niall. Now…

“So, Niall is innocent?” Fergie said.

“No,” I said. It still didn’t work. “Maybe before he showed up at the castle, but not now. There’s still too much evidence.”

“Evidence can be manipulated,” Fergie pointed out. “Maybe the coven? We know they bugged us and shot at you.”

 But there were things that didn’t fit, too. The bug. Rebecca’s team at the castle. Oh, I could believe that she would send a team like that. After all, she had spent my adult life watching me for the coven, ready to kill me if I showed signs of my powers, yet something about it wasn’t quite right.

That kill team of Rebecca’s at the castle…it just hadn’t been good enough. It hadn’t been the kind of thing that spoke of preparation and planning. It felt more like a group thrown together at the last minute, in an emergency. And the bug…the bug was just a little too convenient.

“It doesn’t fit,” I said. “Besides, none of this accounts for the presence of this enchantress. It just doesn’t feel right, either.”

It didn’t. I wasn’t quite sure why. I sat down again, trying to place it. Something about this whole business, from Jessica’s death on, felt familiar. It felt like I’d lived through it before. Everyone stared at me expectantly.

“What does the enchantress look like?” I asked Siobhan.

“Well, she’s beautiful,” Siobhan said, but that wasn’t exactly helpful. I suspected that every enchantress in the world was going to be beautiful.

“Hair? Eyes?” I asked. “Describe her for me, Siobhan. As much detail as you can remember.”

Siobhan waved her hands vaguely, as though having trouble pinning down the memory. Could an enchantress do that? Could I do anything to help against it? I didn’t really have the strength to push clarity into Siobhan, but I tried.

“She has dark hair, and these really deep blue eyes. I mean, when she looks at you, it’s like you can’t see past them. You know what I mean?”

“I know.” And I did. Damn it. I stood and headed through the house, with Marie, Fergie, and Siobhan all trailing after me.

“Where are you going, Elle?” Fergie demanded.

“To prove to myself how little I pay attention sometimes.” I headed for Niall’s study. “I
saw
her. I saw her but I didn’t pay attention because I was too angry.”

Niall’s box was right where I’d left it. After all the energy I’d used recently I wasn’t sure I had the strength left for an unlocking spell so I lifted it to break it, then thought better of it. I handed it to Siobhan instead.

“Open this for me, please.”

“You can’t,” Marie said. “Niall left very
specific
instructions about never touching his box.”

“I’ve already done it once, and this time I have to, Marie.” I nodded my permission at Siobhan.

Siobhan didn’t even ask why. One good thing about having a goblin thief for an acquaintance was this: in less than a minute, I was holding an open box, rooting through it until I came up with the sepia-darkened picture of Niall and a woman I’d seen in there before. I stared at it, and now that I knew who I was looking at—it was obvious. The hat obscured her features a little, but there was really no mistaking her.

“Is this is the enchantress?” I asked Siobhan, showing her the picture. She hesitated, and then, she nodded.

“This is Victoria de Newe,” I said. “Jessica Hammersmith’s lover.”

Marie started, and I looked over at her. “Do you know that name, Marie?”

“I need to find something. There was something…” She walked out of the room.

Fergie looked longingly after her, but stayed in the room. “So, Victoria is Jessica Hammersmith’s killer?”

“Yes.” It made sense now. If I had just paid more attention when I had been going through Niall’s things the first time, I would even have seen it.

Fergie stared at me blankly. “I don’t get it. Why would this Victoria do something like that?”

Why indeed? She hadn’t drained Jessica of energy. She had destroyed her. She had poured despair into her and driven her to suicide. She had even reported it to the insurers as suspicious.

“Maybe she wanted to frame Niall for the murder and collect the insurance money?” Siobhan piped up.

I nodded. “Maybe. It’s obvious that she has some connection to Niall, but the insurance money…she actually
told
me that she doesn’t get it all. You checked that, Fergie, remember? Jessica’s sister gets it.”

“Almost all of it,” Fergie agreed. “Would the remaining portion be worth killing for?”

Not on its own. There was still too much about this that I didn’t understand.

Marie came back in the room, carrying a box with the coven logo on it. I’d seen it enough times back when I’d worked for them. She took a deep breath and handed it to me.

“The coven sent this?” I asked.

“I don’t really know who sent it. All I know is, someone left it on the doorstep and after Niall broke the seal, he was upset. He threw it across the room. Niall never does that.”

“When was this?” I asked.

“Just before all this started.”

When Niall had started disappearing for meetings I didn’t know about, in other words.

I opened the box and saw an aged piece of faded red ribbon inside, with knots tied in it and the ribbon cut. There was a piece of paper with it, saying simply:
Niall and Victoria
.

“What is this?” I asked.

“It’s a handfasting ribbon,” Marie explained.

I’d heard about the tradition. It used to be the case in Scotland that people could have a kind of ‘trial marriage’ for a year by being handfasted in the old way. I stared at the ribbon, letting the implications of that sink in. No wonder Niall had been so reluctant to talk about Victoria. No wonder he had been so secretive lately. And of course, it gave Victoria at least one reason to want to hurt Niall.

Except that it still didn’t explain everything. It didn’t explain the timing, for one thing. Why now, when Siobhan had said that Victoria had been down in the tunnels beneath the city for years? What had changed? I knew the answer to that. I knew it as soon as I asked the question.
I
had changed.

I’d known this had felt familiar, but it couldn’t be that, could it? Yet, what else could it be? Which meant…

“Siobhan,” I said, “I think if we find Victoria, we will find Niall. Can you show me the way into the tunnels where your people live?”