2 Witch and Famous (19 page)

Niall was right. Of course, he was right. I’d thought the same when I’d confronted Victoria. It was too much of a coincidence that Victoria was acting now, so soon after Niall had found me. So soon after my very clear split with the coven.

“But why?” I asked, because that was still the question. “I mean, I know she wants me, but I’ve felt how powerful she is. Why would she need me? Why would she care?”

“Victoria is powerful,” Niall agreed, “but like me, she was never formally trained. She has some knowledge of magic, but only some. Whereas, you have all the knowledge that comes from being the daughter of a coven leader.”

“Even so,” I insisted, “Victoria is
ancient.
I mean, just to live that long…”

“Our bodies do that automatically,” Niall said. “Without the knowledge and training to shape energy, all the power in the world can only go so far. Victoria could take a crowd and make it believe almost anything. Her position with the goblins shows that. She could take one person and make them
do
anything. That part is not in doubt.”

“The way she did with Jessica.”

“The way she did with Jessica,” Niall agreed. “Yet, in a direct confrontation with the coven? Victoria might win, if she caught them off guard. If they were all together. If she broke through their shields.”

I couldn’t help thinking of the witches and warlocks she had taken. Of the way I had nearly drained Rebecca after we had fought Evert.

Niall went on. “It is more likely though, that she would die. If a witch knows one of us is coming, they can stop us getting close enough to breach their defenses. Even if Victoria won the first battle, she would die, because there are spells that can kill from a distance.”

I hadn’t thought about that. Did I truly have so much more magic than Victoria?

“She needs you, Elle,” Niall went on. “She cannot battle the coven alone.”

“Battle the coven? She’s really mad enough to go through with that?”

“That’s my guess,” Niall said. “What else makes all this worth it? How else could her supporters return to the surface? The coven would stop them. The coven would
kill
them.”

I could believe that. The coven only tolerated supernatural creatures up to the point where they became a threat. They had attacked me and threatened me, spied on me and betrayed me. And yet…and yet, I still didn’t want to be used as a weapon against them. Not by Victoria. Not by anyone.

We couldn’t risk it. We couldn’t wait around, either, because I was
not
going to sit there and starve until my principles give in. I was
not
going to kill people simply because I am too hungry not to. How long would that take? A day? A week? An hour? If I had fed more over the last few days, we might have had time, but as it was, I knew I wouldn’t last long down here. Even Niall wouldn’t last forever.

“We have to get out of here,” I said.

“How?” Niall demanded. “I have tried. The cell is well designed. I can climb up the slope with an effort, but the door is strong and I can’t get the lock undone. As I have discovered trying to break it open, any sudden movement knocks me back down here.”

“I have magic,” I pointed out. To prove it, I conjured a faint witch-light, letting me see our prison for the first time. I had been trying to conserve my strength, but I was sick of sitting in the dark. The cell wasn’t large, no more than a few paces across. It was a smooth-walled stone shaft with a slope high up on one side with a drop-off way above our heads. There was no way of climbing up to it, so Niall must have jumped. I couldn’t imagine jumping half that high, as tired as I was.

“Don’t waste your energy,” Niall said. “You’ll need it.”

“It’s only a witch-light. This is easy, now that I know I can do it.”

“I’m glad.” Niall did seem genuinely pleased at that small difference in my life. “You have learned so much.”

“You helped me discover who I am and what I am capable of.” I could hold one of these witch-lights almost without thinking about it now, pulling in tendrils of emotion from around me to power it. Yet, even as I tried it, the light guttered and died. There wasn’t any emotion nearby to take in as sustenance. Whoever designed this oubliette, they did a good job of it, with thick natural walls and a location far enough away from anywhere else that I couldn’t feel anything of the outside world.

“The isolation is part of the torture,” Niall said, obviously feeling the hint of despair that came through to me then.

“Was it here that Victoria held you last time?”

“Not in this oubliette. In another.”

“Where?”

“In the Edinburgh Vaults. There is a way through.” Niall shuddered against me. “She liked the idea of keeping me hidden, so close to one of the city’s attractions.”

“The Vaults, really?” I wanted to see Niall’s face, but I wasn’t sure I had the strength for another witch-light. I was as cut off from emotion to power my magic as I was from light. From hope.

That thought was enough to lend me strength. I pulled emotion from inside me long enough to let me conjure a second light. I wasn’t sure how long it would last, though.

I tried to look around for a way out. There were bones in the corners where those before us had crawled off to die. I didn’t have enough time to look at them properly though. Instead, I went around the circumference of the oubliette with my light, pouring the little power I had into it, keeping it going with my own energy as I walked my slow circuit.

As I held up my witch-light, I saw that there were names and dates scratched on the walls.

“Niall, look at this. There are names here.” I started to read them out, along with the dates beside them. “William Hare. 1828.”

“A notorious killer who had to run from the noose,” Niall said. “He completely disappeared. I guess we know where. Who else?”

“Robert Gunn. Also 1828.” I found myself hoping that he was another killer.

“I don’t know him. Perhaps they were down here together.”

“There are three names, also together, scratched into the stone: Thomas Marshall, James Ducat and Donald McArthur and the year, 1900.”

Niall rustled. “Wait a minute. Let me think. Those names.” He sighed heavily. “I remember now. There were three lighthouse keepers by those names. They disappeared from the Flannan Isles. No one ever knew what happened to them. Although why they would end up here, I don’t know. Leave this, Elle. We cannot escape.”

“You escaped last time.”

“No. Victoria threw down sustenance, and I fed. I killed again. I became what she wanted me to be and then she let me out. That was when I escaped her, not before. The best that we can hope for is to do the same.”

Niall didn’t sound like he believed it would work.

“You don’t think we’ll be able to get away from her like that, do you?” I asked.

Niall shook his head, barely visible now in the dimming light. “I do not believe she will be so trusting a second time. I escaped because I had a space in which to run. Now, she will have learned. She will keep one of us by her so that the other must obey and return. She will take her time about ensuring our loyalty.”

“I don’t want to have to kill someone to get out of here,” I said. “I know you had to—I don’t blame you—but I won’t let Victoria do that to me. I won’t let her do it to
you
again.”

“We cannot stop her,” Niall insisted. “You have explored our cell. The door is the only way out. I am strong enough to reach it, but cannot unlock it. You could unlock it, but you do not have the strength to reach it. As for fighting Victoria…she would kill you, Elle. She wants the power you represent on her side, but do not think that she would spare you if you challenged her. She would rather see you dead than rebellious.”

I kept making my way along the wall anyway, by rote. Not because I really believed that it would help, but because anything was better than simply sitting there waiting for starvation.

“Are other enchantresses like her?” I asked.

“I do not know,” Niall said. “As far as I know, the three of us are the only ones in Scotland. The only ones with our powers, at least. Others of our kind have been hunted down by the coven, and we are rare to begin with. Had you met another like you when you believed you were just a witch?”

I shook my head. “I’d heard about others, but I never got to meet them. I don’t know if they’re even alive. What are we going to do?”

“Whatever we must.”

I would have asked him what that meant, but in that moment, I saw a name scratched into the wall that I knew.
Annette Chambers
. My mother’s name. I cried out in anguish and my witch-light guttered out. I didn’t have the strength to conjure another. Not now.

“What happened? What did you see on the wall?”

“My mother’s name!”

“It can’t be.”

“It was. I’m telling you, Niall. I saw it. My mother’s name, right there. If I could conjure another light…”

“Save your strength,” Niall said. “If you say you saw it, I believe you. But what is it doing here? I thought she died in an accident.”

“She did. Or that was what I was told, at least.”

Why had I said that? Perhaps because I didn’t trust anything anymore, not when it came to the coven. Perhaps just because I was so hungry by then that I wasn’t thinking clearly. Or perhaps there was more to it than that.

 “It could be a trick,” Niall said. “Victoria was always one to invent these complex tortures. Maybe she wants to play with your mind.”

“I hope you are right,” I said, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted, right then. I ran my fingers over the spot where my mother’s name was, trying to read it by touch.

“Elle, stop looking at a darkened wall and come here.”

“I have to find out why my mother’s name is carved in the wall of this oubliette! Was she here or was it a trick? And what, if anything, does my mother have to do with Victoria?”

“I would tell you if I knew.”

“We can’t let Victoria win. We cannot let this be the end of us. Whatever it takes, we have to get out of here.”

“Whatever it takes?” he asked.

“I won’t kill someone,” I said. “I won’t do that to someone who isn’t willing. We’re no better than she is if we do that.”

Niall didn’t answer immediately.

“What is it, Niall?”

“I love you,” he said. In the darkness, his hands found my face, touching me lightly. “And you will
always
be better than Victoria is. You didn’t trust me before.”

“You didn’t make it easy to trust you.”

“Will you trust me now?” he asked.

“Trust you to do what?”

“Just this.” He kissed me in the dark, his lips finding mine as surely as if he could see them. I could taste his lips on mine, feel the delicious sensation of his lips half open against mine. Niall’s tongue darted into my mouth and I groaned as I kissed him back hungrily. My hands found his hair in the dark, pulling him closer, wanting this. Needing this.

 We kissed as though it might be the last time that we had the chance, and for all I knew, it might. I kissed Niall in an apology for everything I had thought about him. I kissed him because he was mine, and not Victoria’s, and my heart was so glad he was.

I kissed him simply because I wanted to. I wanted
him
. It was terrible timing, but I needed Niall with an ache. I let him feel my emotion, as naked as I wished my body were right then. As I wished we both were, because right then I wanted nothing more than the sensation of him next to me. In me.