The Enchanted Writes Book One (23 page)

“Lift your mask,” he nodded at it, “I know
it is not customary at a masquerade to ask anyone, let alone a
lady, to reveal their identity, but you intrigue me.” He didn't
blink as he looked at her, intensifying that deep flicker of
interest in his eyes.

Henrietta shook her head.

He gave a chuckle. “Of course, how rude of
me. We are at a masquerade and it is customary to keep one's mask
on for the entire night. Perhaps after you will reveal your
identity to me.”

Her gut twisted, and she clutched onto her
fan until it felt like she would break it. “Why... why aren’t you
wearing a mask?” She kept stumbling over her words.

He alone, apart from the security guards,
was walking around in full view with nothing to hide his identity.
He had his suit on, with no jacket and no tie, and there wasn't a
mask in sight.

He smiled. “Because I don't have to hide
from anyone.”

It sounded as if Hellier was hinting at
something more. If he knew that Henrietta was a witch hunter, then
telling her he had no one to hide from would be a bold and pointed
statement. But he couldn't know, could he? She was just flustered,
fearful, she was just making things up. There was no way Hellier
could see through her disguise; Brick had assured her so many times
that would be impossible.

But as the fear built within her, Henrietta
felt suddenly unsteady on her heels, and she stumbled slightly to
the side.

Immediately Hellier brought up a hand and
latched it over her arm to steady her.

His grip was cold, his fingers icy as they
pressed into her flesh, and yet, just as his hand lingered, it
began to heat up.

She pulled herself free, mumbling a “thank
you."

Pull yourself together, pull yourself
together, she begged herself over and over again. You are a warrior
woman, act like one.

Henrietta rubbed her thumb and fingers over
her fan, and then she forced herself to look at him. “I hear you
are running for mayor?”

“Now who told you that? I have not formally
announced my desire for candidacy yet.” Hellier brought up a hand
and ran it over his lips and chin.

He still looked intrigued, he still looked
powerfully interested, and it still sent all kinds of tingles
through Henrietta's middle.

“I thought everyone knew?” she added
hastily.

When Brick and Spanner had told her, they
hadn't bothered to mention that Hellier hadn’t announced his
running yet. The fact seemed kind of important now.

“I see, perhaps I am not as good at keeping
a secret as you are.” He stopped running his hand over his chin and
let it rest gently at his side. He was still standing close to her,
and Henrietta shifted her weight back until she was leaning away
from him.

“Sorry?” A shot of nerves passed through her
heart, making it speed up with a burst.

He couldn't know, could he?

“Your mask.” He tapped at his face. “You
still haven't taken it off, and though I am exceedingly good at
recognizing faces, I must admit, I have no idea who you are.”

Henrietta instinctively furled her fan and
brought it up to her face. It was a very strange thing to do, but
she couldn't stop herself from trying to hide behind it. In any
other situation, it might have seemed coquettish, had her eyes not
been pressed open with fear and surprise.

Hellier chuckled again. “You look flushed,
why don't we walk out onto the patio?” He gestured to the opened
doors that led out onto the long patio that wrapped around the
second floor of the building. “The night air will cool you
down.”

No, I really don't want to go out there with
him. Henrietta told herself. But you have to, she added. Because
you have to find out as much about him as you can. Tonight will be
wasted if you don't find out what he is up to and figure out a way
to throw a spanner in his works, well, not Spanner himself, but
anything that will disrupt Hellier's plans.

So even though a part of Henrietta screamed
at her not to follow him onto the patio, she did it anyway.

The night air was cool, but that didn't stop
the heat that rose through her.

Hellier led her out to the patio, then he
leaned down along the long, carved-stone railing, turning towards
the view for a moment before he turned back to her.

Henrietta had never been more thankful for
her disguise. And more than anything, it was the mask, protecting
her eyebrows from view and stunting the emotional range of her
expressions. Because if she wasn't wearing it, then Hellier would
be able to see just how frightened she was.

“Are you cool now?” he asked as he tapped
his hand directly on the railing.

She brought up her fan and began to wave it
at her face. She wasn't trying to look alluring, she was just
trying to remind herself that in her hand was her magical wand, and
if anything went wrong, she could write a spell and be done with
this man.

“Why are you running for mayor?” she asked
as she kept fanning her face.

Hellier cracked into a smile, and it was a
slow move. “I suppose I shouldn't tell you, because I haven't even
made my candidacy public yet, but you seem like the kind of girl
who can hold a secret.”

There he went again, talking about secrets.
As he said the word, he narrowed his eyes, even flicked his gaze
over her face.

He knows. Henrietta thought to herself as
she fanned her face harder and harder.

“I feel that I have a lot of skills that I
could lend to the city,” Hellier began to answer. “I have several
organizational and structural ideas that I think the city planners
would benefit from.”

“Such as?”

“Ah, I trust that if I tell you, you won't
turn around and let the press know?”

Henrietta nodded, keeping her fan in front
of her face as she took a hard swallow.

“Very well, I have plans for the subway
system. Our current infrastructure is inefficient, and if we opened
up tunnels underneath North Square and continued out into the outer
city, we could alleviate peak hour traffic. And I assume I do not
need to tell you that peak hour traffic is responsible for 10% of
this city's carbon emissions. We are too reliant on cars, and in
this day and age, that is a sin.”

He looked like he was serious. From his
expression, to his countenance, to the way he said his words, there
was no indication that underneath was a sodding Witch King whose
only desire was to control and ultimately overcome humanity.

“Subway?”

Hellier nodded. “They have already begun
work on extending a tunnel under North Square, and I must admit, I
was the one who put forward the suggestion to the current Mayor.
However, I believe that if I were elected to that role, there are
many more projects I could achieve, and so much more I could do
with this city.”

Henrietta was now fanning faster and faster,
and if she kept going, her wrist would probably seize up. But she
couldn't help it; he had mentioned the subway, and more than that,
he'd mentioned the construction work going on at North Square.
Brick was almost certain that there was a witch den underneath that
area.

Could that be Hellier’s plan? If he were
elected to mayor, would he sink the city's budget into expanding
the subway, but ultimately expanding the lair of his own witch
coven too?

Before Henrietta could ask any more
questions, Hellier nodded back to the room. “Have you cooled down
yet?”

“I guess.”

“Then, my dear,” he held out his arm, “we
should return to the masquerade.”

She really, really didn't want to touch him,
so she just brought down her fan, nodded at him politely, and
walked through the door on her own.

His eyes sparkled as she passed him.

When they returned to the party, it was to a
sight Henrietta had never seen outside of movies: a proper ballroom
dance.

The band had started up, and the men and
women of the city were all waltzing around with their masks on.

Don't do it, god, don't do it, she suddenly
thought to herself. Because her battle instinct suddenly shouted in
her ear that Mr Hellier was about to do one thing. Ask her to
dance.

Henrietta had never been asked to dance; she
was the permanent wallflower, after all. She really didn't want her
first time to be with a bloody Witch King.

He leaned in, tapped her on the shoulder,
and nodded towards the dance floor. “Care to dance?”

No, bloody no, she wanted to scream at him,
but before she could, he reached down and grabbed up her hands.

Though she wanted to yank her hands free,
she didn't want to make a scene, so somehow she found herself being
pulled towards the center of the dance floor.

He held up one of her hands and brought his
other hand around and rested it on her hip.

The move made her shiver.

She’d never forget that shiver.

They began to dance.

Except Henrietta had never danced in her
life. She had two left feet. She tripped over blades of grass, for
god sakes. So to her, dancing seemed like an impossibility.

Except today she was dancing. Or maybe he
was dancing and she was following. But the point was, Henrietta was
whirling and twisting around on the floor, completely and utterly
unlike herself. Maybe it was the fact she was really a witch hunter
underneath, and maybe the magic that kept her walking on her
ridiculous heels also managed to make her dance.

He held her hand tightly, but the fingers
that rested on her waist did so with a light touch.

It really felt like a scene from a movie. As
they danced over the floor, the both of them agile and quick, all
Henrietta could think was that she belonged in a book or fairytale.
Where the ordinary girl would suddenly turn into a princess, and
then find herself doing a fantastic waltz with the Prince at the
ball, even though she had never taken a dancing lesson in her
life.

And, just like in the movies, people began
to step back, giving them more room, even standing to the side to
watch them.

As they did, Hellier began to dance faster.
He now twisted Henrietta around, her skirt flying out in a twist,
then he pulled her back in, dipped her, and kept moving across the
floor with such grace and speed that at one point he even drew a
round of applause.

Through it all, no matter how hard the
maneuver looked, Hellier always kept his attention focused on her,
that same slight smile on his lips.

Henrietta had never seen a smile like that,
and it did all kinds of things to her stomach, things she really
didn't want to admit to. Because Hellier was the Witch King.

It was close to when the song was about to
finish, just after Hellier had turned her around, and just as he
was moving in for a last dip, that he brought his face alongside
hers and whispered something in her ear.

Just two words.

"Witch Hunter."

Henrietta lost her balance as the fear
rushed through her. Her heels slipped against the floor, sending
her tumbling over.

Her dress whirled around her, one of her
shoes half slipped off her foot, and her hair came loose, bunching
over her shoulder in a mess.

There was a general gasp from the
audience.

Hellier leaned down to offer her a hand, but
he didn't get there first.

No, someone darted out from the audience,
offered her their arm, and had her on her feet in an instant.

Brick.

He had an alarmed look on his face, and
quickly shifted to glance at Hellier.

Henrietta brought a hand up to her head,
pushing the hair that had escaped from her bun across her
shoulders, and trying to steady herself on Brick’s arm.

Brick surreptitiously covered his hand over
his mouth. With his teeth still clenched and his lips hardly
parting, he whispered a single word.

Run.

Even more fear shot through her, and once
again she threatened to slip on her heels and tumble down to the
floor.

But Brick strengthened her.

Then he repeated the word again.

Everyone was watching them, every single
person in the room had turned their way.

Hellier was standing several steps away from
Henrietta, and had his head held to the side, a curious look on his
face as he surveyed Brick.

“Thank you,” Hellier said quickly. “Are you
all right, my dear?”

She scrunched up her nose at his words.
Brick just tightened his grip on her hand.

She had to run.

She had to flee.

Henrietta brought her hands around until she
clasped them behind her back, then she held onto her fan with all
her might. In the slightest of movements, she wrote the word “flee”
with the tip of her silk fan.

There was a rustle of fabric from her skirt,
as if a slight wind had just caught up around her heels. If there
was any light, it was completely hidden by the folds of her fabric.
But that did not stop the sensation.

Moments after she finished casting the
spell, Henrietta's feet were suddenly seized with a frantic energy,
the kind of feeling that told her she could run and run and
run.

She took a careful step backwards, but it
was jerked and quick.

“I need to go to the bathroom... to freshen
up,” she added. She turned from Hellier.

She ran out of the room.

Not too fast, not with the speed of a
sprinter, but fast enough that she got out of there within
seconds.

Then Henrietta ran through the corridor, she
ignored the security at one end, dashed right past them, down the
stairs, through the rest of the party, and finally out of the front
doors of City Hall.

She sped down the steps and shot through the
streets at a frantic pace.

Henrietta Gosling fled.

Every second as she ran, a single thought
occupied her mind. The exact expression on Hellier's face as he’d
mumbled those two words in her ear. Witch Hunter.