2 Witch and Famous (2 page)

Speaking of which, David’s feelings were absolutely
delicious
. What a glorious way to wake up in the morning. After a minute or so, he swayed a bit and I took that as my signal to pull back. It wasn’t easy.

“Are you all right?” I asked. My pulse sang in my veins as I said it.

He nodded. “Fine. Just fine.”

He didn’t look fine. He was far too pale, for one thing. David sat down heavily on a small stool in the car garage.

“You’re sure you are fine?”

“Perfectly fine, Ms. Chambers.”

“Look, I’m going to walk this morning. Should I call Marie for you, or help you to your quarters to rest, maybe?”

“No.” He sounded a little startled at the offer to help him back to his room. Maybe he thought there was more to the offer than I intended. “No, I’m just going to sit here for a minute. I’m sure everything is fine, Ms. Chambers.”

 “It’s really about time you called me Elle,” I said. “Is it like this when Niall takes energy from you?”

“Mr. Sampson makes his own arrangements.”

Meaning that he didn’t feed from his driver. Well,
that
didn’t exactly make me feel better. I squeezed David’s shoulder reassuringly, but couldn’t help grabbing a couple more morsels of emotion through the cut while I did it. I glanced away in shame, stepping back from him. He was a human being, not a breakfast snack.

Although he had done the same job. Briefly, and I knew it would only be briefly, the hunger faded into the background. David nodded politely and I went on my way, my energy high for once. To take my mind off what I’d just done, I wondered what information Siobhan had to sell to me today. Something to do with a stolen item I could locate for an insurer, maybe? I hoped so. I needed all the cases I could get.

I headed off to meet her.

Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival brought out the best and the worst in performers. You could see more entertainment here than almost anywhere else during festival month, but that competition also made performers pretty desperate to impress. More than once already this month, I’d had to use my talents simply to persuade would-be comedians that no, I really
didn’t
want a flier.

 Even this early in the morning, the streets were alive. That was one thing about living in Edinburgh: you either learned to embrace the festival excitement, or you effectively moved out of the city for the month. I loved the shows and the food, but I’d always been stuck firmly in the latter camp.

Until recently, I hadn’t had the choice. With that much emotion about… well, August was the month I usually left on holiday. This year though…well, this year, I had Niall; he’d said he was bound by the demands of his business deals to stay in the city.

In reality, I think he was trying to force me to stay and see it all. Showing me again that I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the emotion the way I’d always been taught. Until I met him, I’d worked so hard to push away emotional hotspots. I hadn’t even been able to set foot in a nightclub. Every year, I’d gone somewhere else. Now, I had
this.

I watched a quartet of Great Highland bagpipers and drummers for a while, soaking in their passion for their music as they belted out reinterpretations of the top forty. This was the Fringe, after all, rather than the festival proper. Enjoying the reactions of the crowd around me, it must have been about the first time I’d ever
enjoyed
bagpipes. It was a windy day and they were all wearing kilts, so there was some fun to be had there, too.

My phone went off. Frankly, over the bagpipes, I barely heard it. There was a reason the Scots used to take them into war with them. I looked at the caller ID and walked off so I could return my phone call without being deafened.

“Hello, Elle. Thanks for returning my call so quickly.”

“What’s up, Fergie?”

Fergie was my legal assistant—a lawyer who had moved to the city to be nearer his elderly mother. He was also a werewolf.

“Have you, by any chance, seen Siobhan today?” Fergie asked.

“As a matter of fact, we’re meeting this morning. I haven’t seen her yet. You know how goblins are good at sticking to the shadows. I’m sure she’ll show up soon, though. She texted me that she has some new information for me.”

“Really? And of course she wants payment for that information?”

“Yes.” She
was
an informant by profession. Well, when she wasn’t being a thief. “What is it about Siobhan this morning?”

Fergie hesitated a moment. “I’m worried about her…”

“Is this the ‘she’s a thief and you can’t trust her’ conversation again?” I asked. Apparently, my werewolf lawyer had this thing about known thieves. “Because we’ve been through this, Fergie. I know Siobhan. I
like
Siobhan.”

 “It’s a little more specific,” Fergie said. “This morning, when I unlocked the office, no one was here, but I detected the after-scent of goblins in the conference room, specifically, on the couch, the conference table, and the carpet.”

I grimaced. “Goblins, as in plural?”

“Yes. Male and female.”

“Oh, wonderful,” I said, my heart sinking. I only knew one goblin couple, in the form of Siobhan and her boyfriend, Dougie. I didn’t like Dougie. I
really
didn’t like the thought of him and Siobhan having sex on my conference table. Get a room. One that didn’t belong to me. “Is anything missing from the office?”

“The computers are all here, but they have been moved a bit. You know how I like things to be orderly.”

That was putting it mildly. When I’d hired him, I hadn’t known that years of obsessing about a combination of the phases of the moon and the minor details of tort law had left Fergie more than a little OCD about these things.

“Siobhan and her friend have left some things askew. Crumbs are about. Pens and papers, receipt books and legal forms—small things of that sort—have been moved in our supply closet, as if someone was looking for something. So far, we do have one casualty.”

“Oh no. What’s gone missing?” I asked.

“My mum’s leftover haggis, neeps and tatties from the office refrigerator. I’m guessing it was their breakfast.”

“Neeps and tatties?” I smiled. “You realize that you’re a walking stereotype, Ferguson Black? Why not just have everything deep fried and have done with it?”

“I
like
neeps.”

I smiled at that. “Take some money out of petty cash for your lunch today. I’ll talk to Siobhan about unwanted sleepovers. Is that everything that’s missing?”

“I’ll check. Give me a minute.” I heard him rustling around in the background. After a few moments, he said, “Elle, we have a bigger problem than I thought. The petty cash box
has been snatched. It was in a locked file cabinet.”

I groaned. Even for Siobhan, there were lines. “I’ll deal with this, Fergie.”

“Um, you aren’t going to do anything…”

“I’m not going to do anything illegal. Or dangerous. You think I’d drain someone over this? I’m not a monster, Fergie.”

“I never said you were.” He sighed. “Look, I don’t want to get Siobhan in trouble or make her lose her occasional jobs with you. I just don’t want her compromising the security at the office, and she has done
exactly
that. She’s sneaking in and sleeping there, stealing from us.”

“They probably don’t have another place to sleep and they’re broke,” I pointed out. “We can replace the food and cash.”

The trust would be harder.

Fergie paused. He knew that it was my call to make. I was the boss. “So, what should we do about it? I called you first, rather than ring the police.”

“You did the right thing,” I assured him. The last thing we needed was the police trying to investigate purely supernatural affairs. “Change the door alarm code. I’ll deal with the rest.”

“What do you want me to change it to?”

“I’ll text you the number after we hang up.”

“All right.”

“And, Fergie? Could you sniff around so that we’re certain about how she got in? If she’s squeezing through the attic or coming in through a window with her delinquent boyfriend… well, that leaves our office wide open for a huge goblin invasion.” I thought about some of my other employers. “It also doesn’t do our insurance premiums much good.”

“I’ll track her scent to figure out how she got in here.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. Don’t let her get away with this, though.”

“Fergie.” I didn’t let my tone sharpen, but he had to know what I meant. He’d had his say. I would deal with this. “Siobhan’s good at what she does.”

“That’s true. If you want to recover stolen property, get a goblin thief as an informant.”

I laughed.

“Oh, I do have other news,” Fergie said in a different tone.

“What is it?” I asked. I was probably about to get a run-down of the minor details of a couple of insurance claims. For a fearsome shape-shifting creature out of myth, it turned out that Fergie was mostly very good at paperwork.

“Three things, actually. I have been working on background investigations on the coven. You know that they’re still talking about the possibility of getting rid of you?”

“How did you find that out?”

“I have a contact who infiltrated the coven.”

“What? Who?”

He paused. “Me.”

“You?” I asked, surprised. I stepped further away from the crowds, into a spot of shade off the street.

“It’s amazing what people will say when a friendly lawyer pops round to discuss their legal position regarding you. Especially when they don’t know that lawyer can hear like me and start talking outside the room. I also did some digging into the paperwork around them. Their companies, deals, minutes and so on. During the course of that, I’ve found out a few things. I think I should probably discuss a couple of them with you in person.”

“You can tell me that the coven might want to kill me over the phone, but not this part?”

“The coven already know that you know they want you gone,” Fergie pointed out. “This part… it’s more important that I tell you face to face.”

“Intriguing,” I said. “Wait, you said three pieces of news. What’s the third piece of news?”

“The
Bewitched
DVD that you ordered to replace the one that wore out has arrived.” There was undisguised mirth in his voice.