by Holly Ice
‘I got roped into cleaning. Shauna saved me.’
Shane’s eyes darted to the envelope. ‘What is that? Your pay?’
I swallowed, mouth dry. He’d told me this mission would be trouble, but he’d be so worried to be proved right.
‘It was hand-delivered. For me.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Someone knew you were there? What does it say?’
‘I haven’t looked yet.’
Lyall flapped his wings and landed on my shoulder. He’d been waiting in the car for hours.
You okay, Lyall?
Dying of boredom. Get on with it. Open the letter. I can’t see any magic attached to it.
Pays to be sure.
‘Can any of you see if this letter is spelled?’
It seemed clean to me, but they all had more experience of the magical world than I did.
‘Can’t see anything,’ Ivy said.
‘Me neither.’ Shauna made a hurrying motion. ‘Open it!’
‘Nor me,’ Inzi said.
And she was the most highly trained person here…
Shane moved closer, eyes on the envelope, and I smiled. I loved it when he got protective.
I tore open the seal.
A folded sheet of parchment was tucked inside. Thick and posh but without a logo, name, or signed author.
I read the note, and my gut bubbled. ‘Stop looking.’
Shane snatched it from my hands and glared at the handwriting, as if trying to burn it from existence.
‘I knew this party was a bad idea,’ he said, his shoulders stiff, his hands clenched.
I stroked his hand and laced my fingers through his. I loved how much he worried. It bothered me too. But we needed to focus on who’d sent it.
Shauna took the letter. ‘I can show this to someone our family works with from time to time. Maybe they can track a signature from it.’
‘You can try. Maybe we’ll get lucky.’
I wasn’t optimistic. No one delivered a threat like this in person. But I didn’t have any other solid leads. Apart from…
‘I met Perseus. He gave me a very bad vibe.’
Shauna’s eyes widened. ‘You’re sure then? He has something to do with this?’
‘Positive.’
Ivy’s foot grew heavy on the accelerator, pushing me into the door at the next bend.
‘Ease up a little, Ivy!’ Shauna said.
‘That bastard! I bet he has Avery’s children with him somewhere. Screw proof. We should corner him, demand he tells us where they are.’
I didn’t think it’d be that simple. I eyed Shauna, and her expression said much the same.
‘We need to step carefully,’ Shauna said. ‘We’ve exhausted our favours on the coven.’
‘And whose fault is that!’ Ivy snapped.
‘We might never have found her without Bianca. You know how much help she’s been.’
Ivy grumbled, and I smiled, remembering how she did that every morning before her coffee. I shook myself. I shouldn’t be remembering things like that. I shouldn’t know that at all.
‘You okay, Bee?’ Shane asked, frowning.
‘Aye, fine. Just a weird memory.’
I blew out my breath. How did we move on from here? We had so little.
Shane squeezed my thigh.
I leaned into him. His quiet support made all the difference and gave me an idea.
‘Maybe you can’t get to Perseus through the coven,’ I said, ‘but you can still watch him. He’s bound to slip sooner or later. Babies need feeding and care round the clock. He can’t leave them alone for long.’
‘There’s a few people I trust who can help,’ Inzi said.
I looked her in the eye. ‘You’d trust them with your life?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d put money on him being the last person we pin to this,’ Ivy said, her voice cracking. ‘He’s a cunning bastard. He would’ve thought this through every which way before getting involved.’
I winced and stared at the letter in Shauna’s hands until the clawing need to comfort Ivy passed. Once this was over, I was taking a long, long break from the Delvauxs.
Chapter 17
We couldn’t track the letter for almost a week. Ivy and Shauna’s signature tracker wasn’t enthusiastic about what she called a wild goose chase across the witch community. She’d taken a lot of convincing, which meant a lot of money. But today we’d finally make more progress.
The Delvauxs parked outside the academy. I peered into the back for the tracker, expecting a blonde, young, ambitious thing.
She wasn’t what I expected. White-haired with more frown lines than smile lines, she had to be in her sixties, and she’d dressed for a long day – jeans, warm coat, and heavy, buckled boots. I’d put money on them being steel-capped.
‘She’s something,’ Shane said.
‘Yeah. Not what I thought she’d be either.’
‘Is that for me?’ She eyed the cardboard wallet Inzi held, the envelope safe inside – plastic didn’t breathe well and erased much of a signature, apparently.
Inzi handed the wallet over.
‘Where do we start?’ I asked.
The tracker wagged her finger. ‘Young ’uns are so impatient…’ She opened the wallet and took a deep breath, her frown lines sharper. She slowly turned in a circle. ‘North.’
Shauna drove while the rest of us packed into the back, squished tight together with six of us, with the windows down so the tracker could better follow the trail.
She had her head half outside the car like the tracker on the raid, and we got more than a few horns and funny looks once we reached the main roads. Especially since we drove way below the speed limit.
She cursed. ‘Lost it again. Pull over.’
Shauna slammed on the brakes and turned sharply onto the edge of the road.
The logging truck behind us blared its horn and rocked the car as it sped by.
‘Do we have to go at a snail’s pace?’ Ivy asked.
‘That’s the process, honey. I’d rather be home, tucking into my apple pie, but nooo, you wanted me to track some poor delivery boy to his house.’ She raised an eyebrow.
‘Sorry,’ Ivy mumbled.
‘I’m sure you are, honey.’ The tracker took the envelope out again. A minute or two later, she pointed to the turnoff we’d just passed. ‘That way.’
Hours later, the latest road ended at a decrepit shack. This had to be a mistake. And yet, the tracker got out of the car and walked straight up the garden path.
‘This is it,’ she said.
‘You’re sure?’ Shauna asked, locking the car.
The older woman put her hand on her hip. ‘Do you trust me to do the job or not, youngling?’
Shauna sighed but raised her fist and knocked.
The door gave under her hand, moving backwards in the loose frame.
I was ready to call it abandoned when a face appeared at hip height. The young girl looked past us, towards the car, then back inside.
She shuffled her feet. ‘Who are you?’
Shane cleared his throat and crouched to the girl’s level. ‘Are your parents home?’
He was so sweet, engaging her, reminding me how Ivy had been with children, so soft and open.
I shook my head. Not my memories.
The girl’s lips thinned, and I knew she must be thinking through a good argument, trying to make us believe they’d be back any minute. And she’d paled. I didn’t want her scared.
‘How about we wait in the car?’ Shane glanced ever so briefly over the girl’s shoulder at the scabby, patched couch. ‘Is that okay? You can tell your parents to meet us outside.’
He was so good at working out how others felt, which was probably how he’d wormed his way around my walls.
The girl nodded and closed the door.
We returned to the car.
Our tracker pestered Shauna until she unlocked the doors, then claimed the passenger seat.
&nb
sp; ‘I’m telling you, the one you want lives there,’ she said, her legs hanging out the door.
‘It has to be her parents,’ Shauna said. ‘And she won’t say anything till they get home, so we may as well get comfortable.’
I rubbed my eyes. Waiting for hours after our six-hour road trip wasn’t appealing.
‘Did you want to rest in the car?’ Shane asked. He moved to open the back.
‘No, I’m fine.’
I eyed our tracker. I’d expected her to complain. She’d tried to hide it, but every backtrack on the road had pissed her off, like a personal affront on her time and skills. But now she was massaging lotion into her hands, not the slightest bit bothered by the delay.
‘Did you see anything that’d help us speed this up?’ I asked.
‘Sorry, no.’
I took Shauna’s arm and led her away from the car, out of earshot. ‘How are you paying her?’
‘Why is that important?’
‘By the day, or the hour?’
‘The hour. She insisted. And her rate is extortionate.’
‘Do you trust her?’
Shauna tilted her hand. ‘She’s the only tracker we knew who might help. She doesn’t care about trials and murders. She follows the money.’
‘And how far are we from the academy, if we drove straight here?’
‘I don’t know… three hours?’
I nodded, went to the car, and grabbed the tracker’s wrinkled hands.
She tried to jerk away, her hands slipping with all that moisturiser, but I held on tight.
My gut wrenched, and I got a flash of the broken shack overlaid with various colours, leading in and around and away at varying intensities.
The letter bundled inside the cardboard pouch in her hands was the exact same shade of purple as a fresh trail that led out of the shack and into the woods. It ended only ten metres into the tree line.
I gritted my teeth. She’d kept us waiting to fill her pocket. Maybe a few of those backtracks on the road were on purpose.
When I came back to myself, our tracker had snatched her hands back, but we didn’t need her for this part anymore.
‘This way,’ I said.
Shauna and Ivy shared a frown but followed. Shane stuck to my side.
Our tracker joined us too, suddenly finding the energy to half jog. ‘I have bills to pay and three grandkids whose parents are hopeless.’
‘Lives are at risk, Mabel,’ Ivy snapped.
Her shoulders slumped, and she slowed.
We left her behind at the tree line.
There. A black hoodie.
I hurried past a crop of bushes, towards a woman trying and failing to hide behind a tree trunk. ‘We need to talk to you,’ I said.
She backed away.
I raised my hands. ‘We don’t want to hurt you. Just talk.’
She stopped trying to run. ‘I don’t want to get involved,’ she said. ‘I don’t have any money. I’m sorry. Please, leave us alone.’
‘We don’t want your money,’ I said. How could someone all the way out here be behind the letter? ‘Just information.’
From the terror on her pale face and how wide her eyes were, she wasn’t the mastermind behind this.
I glanced at Shane.
He took one step closer, and the woman shrank back.
Shauna took over, offering the woman her hand. ‘I’m Shauna Martin. It’s good to meet you…?’
‘Valerie.’
‘Valerie, wonderful. Now, maybe we can come to an agreement? We only want to know who asked you to deliver a letter to my friend.’
‘The blank one at the party?’
‘Yes, that’s the one.’
She rubbed her arms and looked through the trees, towards the shack. ‘I needed the money.’
‘We’re not here to tell you off or take your money away. We just want to know who gave it to you.’
She bit her lip. ‘They threatened my daughter.’
‘We left her safe inside the house. We’re not like that.’
She nodded slowly. ‘I can’t say anything. I don’t want them to find out. They’re connected.’
‘So are we.’
She frowned and glanced at something. A moth, but spirit light surrounded it. The moth was her familiar. No wonder she was so fragile. But at least that meant she was a witch.
Valerie kept glancing at me, like I’d strangled her cat. And a witch was also a curse. They’d all ken exactly who I was.
I backed up a good few metres.
She grew less tense the farther I went. Like I was diseased.
Shane rubbed my back in silent support.
‘He came in the middle of the night and threw money at me. A few thousand. Then he demanded I deliver the letter. The taxi was already waiting, and I… didn’t argue.’
‘And your girl?’ Shauna asked. ‘Did she see anything?’
Valerie rubbed her throat. ‘That’s why I agreed so quickly. He said he’d stay with her until I was done. He’s never threatened her before. And he’s Cognata, and strong. Way stronger than me. I didn’t think anyone would come here about a letter.’
Shana patted the woman’s arm. ‘It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. But we need to know who he is.’
The woman shook.
This trail was taking too long. Every day we were away from the women, the higher the chance more of them would die. We’d already wasted a week waiting for Mabel.
Ivy glanced over her shoulder at me and nodded. She must have had the same thought.
So I approached the woman, my gut quivering at the way she shuddered and shook. I couldn’t let her personal opinion of me get in the way. We needed to stop the McKees.
I grabbed her wrist before she snatched it back. Her most prominent emotional memory immediately obliterated the darkness I usually Saw for the first few seconds of a vision.
I peeked through the gaps in her house’s walls when a smart car approached, followed by an older taxi. A man stepped out. I signalled for her daughter to hide in the bedroom.
The man pounded on the door until it gave under his fist, smacking off the wall.
The house shuddered, and I glanced at her shaking hands.
He stalked through the door and cornered her.
He reeked of stale alcohol, but she couldn’t get around him.
He threw a wodge of money on the sofa, then pushed the envelope into her chest.
‘You will deliver this to the Wildes girl. The taxi driver knows where she is. And be quick about it. I’ll wait here with little Sami.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
He tsked. ‘I didn’t ask your opinion.’
He took her arm and burned the skin until a red handprint marked her. The white-hot pain seared, but she gritted her teeth through it with barely a squeak.
I jolted back into myself, rubbing my arm and eying the woman’s long sleeves. She was stronger than she looked.
‘She’s not lying. A man came and threatened her until she agreed to deliver the letter.’
‘Who was the man?’ Ivy asked.
I didn’t recognise him. And describing him… he was so average. Brown hair, brown eyes, tanned white skin, jeans and a t-shirt, though I suspected they were designer. ‘Rich. Plain. Average?’
‘Did you see his familiar?’ Shauna asked.
Slowly, I shook my head. The familiar must’ve waited in the car, but then how did this woman ken he was Cognata?
‘Do you know him?’ I asked.
‘No.’
This time I didn’t believe her. She’d hidden her daughter the moment she’d seen his car. He’d hurt her before.
‘You do. Who is he?’
‘I don’t know him.’
I gritted my teeth. ‘Who. Is. He?’
‘I can’t. He’ll hurt us.’
‘He won’t dare,’ Shauna said.
The mother pursed her lips. ‘And how will you stop him? Will you leave a guard all the way ou
t here to watch out for us? For how long? Weeks? I don’t think so.’
‘Let’s go,’ Shane said.
Ivy threw her hands up. ‘Go? We don’t have anything!’
He pulled her away from the house. The rest of us followed.
‘She isn’t going to talk. She has her child to think about,’ he said.
He was right. We were pushing too hard.
Ivy’s head drooped, the fire in her eyes dampening. ‘What about Mabel?’ she asked. ‘Can’t she track this new person? Bianca Saw where he stood, what he touched. There has to be something she can go on.’
Except I’d been inside Mabel’s mind, seen her ability at work, and the only signatures were ours and this family’s. ‘She can’t see his signature,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s already faded.’
‘No, it lasts at least a week.’
‘Then maybe we overlaid it?’ I thought about where the man had parked and stood. He’d kept to well-travelled areas. We may have walked over his trail.
I glanced at our tracker. She’d bundled back into the car and was scrolling through her phone. Not so sorry, after all.
‘Are we sure she only wanted money? She could have seen a trail before we arrived and let us overwrite it.’
Shauna hesitated, but Ivy shook her head.
‘She’s not that cold,’ Ivy said. ‘She knew what Avery meant to me, and she was an old friend of her mother’s, even if they were at odds lately. She wants the money, but she wants to help us, too.’
I rubbed my eyes until I saw stars.
‘Okay, then we need to find someone who knows Valerie well. Someone who can tell us who this guy is, or convince her to tell us.’
She had to have a friend who remembered someone who’d scared her that badly. Or parents, relatives… Sami’s teacher, even. But how would we find someone like that, in the middle of nowhere?
‘Valerie is what, late thirties?’ Shauna asked.
I shrugged. ‘Around that, probably.’ Her girl looked about seven.
‘Then… hold on.’
Shauna got out her phone and spoke briefly to another woman, giving her the short version of what was going on.
Whoever they were, they had to be close for her to admit they were looking into Avery’s murder.
Shauna hung up. ‘Lily is the ringleader of the biggest witch gossips. She’ll know someone. She said she’d have an answer in…’ Her phone rang. ‘Now, apparently.’
