Witch in Danger

by Elle Adams

  I shoved clothes on without really paying attention and half ran from the house, in the direction of the police station. Alissa would not be thrilled at being left behind, but she was the one who’d almost been arrested this time. I wouldn’t let anyone else take the fall for my curiosity.

  To say the town’s prison wasn’t my favourite place was an understatement. I didn’t have a clue where they took dead bodies, since where vampires and zombies were concerned, not everything stayed dead, but in the case of a murder investigation, the police station would be the likely place to find out the details. Despite my rest-free slumber, it’d been seven hours or so since the murder, so maybe they’d still be here.

  Sure enough, voices greeted me as I pushed open the door to the brick building where the gargoyles ran the local law enforcement. It appeared to have been built for regular-sized humans, and everything from the low ceilings to the furniture was undersized. Unless they just liked feeling big and important. Who knew.

  I looked around, and saw another door open on the left. The huge shape of a gargoyle filled the room, next to—

  Nathan turned around with his eyebrows raised. “Blair?”

  “I…” Had not rehearsed my excuses. “Alissa got accused of murder,” I blurted. “A vampire died at the hospital. So I thought it might be the same killer, or…” My gaze snagged on the table inside the room. “The body is in there?”

  “Yes, it is. I spent last night searching the forest for others.” He looked like he had, too, judging by the rough stubble on his jaw and the dark circles under his eyes.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “An elf.”

  No.

  It’s not your family. Elves might be related to fairies, but I wasn’t one. Still…

  “How?” I whispered. “A werewolf?” I’d heard their territories were close enough that they sometimes got into scuffles.

  He shook his head. “It’s not a werewolf kill.”

  “What are you doing here?” demanded Steve the gargoyle. “Interfering again.”

  I held up my hands. “I just wanted to see if there’d been any developments on the vampire murder. I’d rather avoid my friend or me facing any other accusations.”

  “Vampire murder?” Nathan asked. “Who?”

  Before I could explain, Steve stepped towards me, unintentionally revealing the view of the room behind me. I made the mistake of looking at the body on the table, and gagged. Luckily, Steve didn’t get in my way as I ran outside and threw up in the nearest bush.

  Nathan’s hand rested on my shoulder. His tone was gentle when he said, “I think you should go home, Blair.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “Alissa was accused of murdering a vampire in the hospital yesterday. At the same time as the attack in the forest, more or less.”

  “Really? Are you sure?”

  I straightened upright, nodding. “He was poisoned. So obviously, no connection there. Maybe it’s a coincidence. But Steve nearly dragged both of us in. I didn’t even do anything this time.”

  “You were at the hospital last night, though?” he asked.

  He really did make it impossible to make excuses. “I went after Alissa when Sky—my cat—insisted on it. You know what he’s like. Anyway, she’s off the hook for now, but when you said you found a body, I freaked out. I thought there might be a connection.”

  “To a poisoned vampire?” he asked. “That’s not my area at all, but I can ask at the police if they’d be willing to share any details with me. Just in the interests of keeping you and your friend safe. Don’t get any ideas.”

  “Yeah, right. I’m not the retired hunter here.”

  His expression darkened. “Maybe not retired for long. That kill doesn’t look like it belongs to anyone or anything known to live here.”

  My stomach turned over and I nearly threw up again. “Seriously?”

  “I don’t want to alarm you with the details.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “I can handle it. As long as I don’t have to look at…” I vaguely gestured at the police station again. “Whereabouts in the forest did it happen? Who was it?”

  “We’ve yet to find out. The elves haven’t responded to our request for their help with identifying the body.”

  That was bound to go over well. The elves didn’t like the witches, but I wasn’t sure where the gargoyles ranked. Surely they all obeyed the laws if they were allowed to stay in the town. “But—was it near the witches’ part of the forest?”

  “It was on the boundary between elf and witch territories.”

  Not near the waterfall, then. The shifters occupied the northern part of the forest. The witches, the south. And the elves, the west. I didn’t know the exact boundaries, because while the parts of the forest that weren’t the witches’ weren’t exactly forbidden to the rest of us, the shifters and elves were both fairly territorial. That made walking near their territory risky at best, but the falls were neutral territory. Now, with the forest dangerous, I doubted my absent family members would invite me for a second meeting.

  But if there was a killer in the forest, Nathan himself had had a narrow escape. “Did they make you search the whole forest last night when whatever killed that elf was still out there?”

  “I volunteered to,” he said. “It was my job, remember? I know the forest backwards, even in the dark. But I found nothing. No footprints or traces.”

  A chill raced down my spine. “No traces at all?”

  “I’ll go back to search later. I’m helping to identify the possible cause of death. I know most monster-related injuries.”

  “I can imagine.” Actually, I didn’t want to imagine. Why couldn’t I have fallen for a guy with a normal job, like an accountant, or…

  Wait. Fallen for? Nope. I wouldn’t go that far. Especially with all the secrets I was keeping.

  “You don’t know what might have killed him, at all?” I asked.

  “No.”

  Lie.

  My whole body stiffened. In all the time we’d known each other, my inner lie detector had never gone off around Nathan before. But he was entitled to keep his own secrets, right?

  “Go home,” he repeated. “I’d try to enjoy the rest of your weekend, so you can be ready for your classes next week. Don’t get any more involved in this than you have to.”

  I squashed my instinct to tell him not to order me around. The murders were none of my business, and I doubted the police would come after Alissa again when Madame Grey found out. She was fiercely overprotective of her grandchildren.

  But what can I do? I’d come close to being accused myself. But I was probably the only person in town who knew there was a fairy of some unknown type in the forest last night.

  I’d lived here for only a few months, but I’d come to feel Fairy Falls was safe. And logically, the not-so-retired paranormal hunter was absolutely the person to deal with any threats. But I didn’t want the guy I was crushing on to end up getting eaten by a monster. That was reasonable enough.

  As for the vampire’s killer, Sky had only warned me because Alissa was in trouble. That was all.

  I got back to the flat and found Alissa sitting at the kitchen table. I was still shaky from my experience at the police station, so I made a mug of tea with an infusion of a calming draught, and sat down opposite her.

  “Please tell me you weren’t where I think you were,” she said.

  “I went to the police station to check on Nathan. He was up all night dealing with the…”

  “Dead body? Who was it?”

  “An elf,” I said, dropping my gaze to my mug to avoid seeing her shocked expression. “No clue if it has anything to do with whoever killed the vampire, but they’re marking it as a wild animal attack. Anyway, have you spoken to your grandmother?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. It’s safe to say I’m off the hook for now. But… the wolves aren’t.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “What, they’re accusing the werewolves? Were there even an
y wolves in the hospital at the time?”

  “I don’t know, but you know the rivalry there.”

  Did I ever. During my first week in town, Vincent had given me his card, implying I wanted to pick him over the werewolves, and that I could only choose to be an ally to one and not the other. Of course, it didn’t help matters that I’d ticked off the leader of the werewolf pack when his beloved daughter had got stuck in her wolf form due to an accident at Dritch & Co. My former co-worker Blythe had been responsible, but since I’d wound up at the centre of that particular incident and I hadn’t spoken to anyone from the pack since, they probably still held a grudge.

  “There’s another issue,” Alissa said. “They want me to talk to my ex. To Bryan.”

  “What, they think he did it?”

  Heat crept to her face. “I don’t know what they think, to be honest, but they think I’m the best person to talk to the pack. Or Steve still thinks I’m guilty and wants to keep me involved without angering my grandmother.”

  I winced. “They won’t be at the New Moon, at least.”

  “No, he’ll be at his house, which means dealing with him trying to lure me inside. Will you…”

  “Come with you for moral support? Absolutely.”

  Not least because I needed to get the wild animal attack off my mind.

  “Why accuse him?” I asked. “Seems random.”

  “He came to see me at work last week. He sneaked into the ward without permission, to bring me flowers and tell me he wanted to get back together. Obviously, I told him to get lost. But the vampire died the next day. I don’t think he’d poison someone, and I have no idea if the two of them had any history or not, but he’s still on the suspect list.”

  “Oh. He’s not likely to react well, is he?”

  “No,” she admitted. “Better than the chief, though.”

  Chief Donovan led the pack. We hadn’t spoken since he’d yelled at me in the hospital waiting room and insisted it was my fault Callie had been attacked. One of her other relatives had also called Nathan a cold-blooded murderer, too. Nathan himself seemed to get on fine with my co-worker Callie, at least, but there was definitely some unhappy history between him and the rest of the pack. I hadn’t asked for the details. Maybe I didn’t want to know. He’d already lied to me once. But I’d be a hypocrite to call him out on it, considering the fairy-shaped elephant in the room. Maybe it was for the best that Alissa and I talk to the pack instead.

  Alissa and I left to go to the werewolf’s house as soon as she was done with breakfast.

  “So why was Nathan at the police station?” she asked.

  “He found the body.” I filled her in on the rest of the details as we walked.

  “Wow,” she said. “Hell of a Friday night. I don’t think the two cases are likely to be connected. There’s a fairly big difference between killing a vampire by stealth and a monster attacking someone in the woods.”

  I swallowed hard. “Is it common for monsters to run around the forest? Nathan implied he’s dealt with this kind of thing before.”

  “He spoke to you about it?”

  “He got dragged out of retirement,” I said, not taking her up on her suggestive tone. “He did promise to tell me if he learns anything useful, but he’s pretty dead set on me not getting involved in this one.”

  “He knows what you’re like,” she said. “And for the record, I agree with him. You’ve experienced entirely too much danger since moving here.”

  “I’m worried about you,” I countered. “Those cells are horrible. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Also, when Nathan said he found a body, he didn’t say whose it was, so my imagination went crazy. You know I was meant to meet someone by the falls last night. I had to check.”

  An ache grew in my chest, the same one that had pursued me for the last few weeks since receiving the note, amplified. Maybe I should have flown in on my boots over the lake without going into the forest at all…

  Lost in thought, I tripped over nothing and Alissa caught my arm.

  “It’s a good thing that you didn’t try walking down to the falls in the middle of the night,” she said. “You can’t even walk in a straight line today.”

  “I’m tired. And distracted.”

  “Don’t worry, you can go home and nap as soon as this is done. We’re at the right road.” She pointed to the right, past a park next to the woods. “I should have planned what to ask him.”

  “Bryan shouldn’t be in trouble if he didn’t do it, right?”

  “No, he shouldn’t. Usually only the nurses have access to that room. And the vampires. But he did somehow get all the way into the ward, so it’s possible nobody was paying attention. We were in the middle of a busy shift, understaffed, and dealing with some difficulties with that drunken elf patient. That’s what I’d have had to deal with if I’d stayed last night.”

  She walked to the door of one of the brick houses, and knocked.

  A man with shaggy blond hair answered a moment later. He looked grumpy and tired, but his eyes brightened at the sight of Alissa. “You changed your mind?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m here because someone—a vampire—was murdered at the hospital yesterday. The police think you might be involved, so I’m to get the full story from you.”

  He blinked. “I was there to see you,” he said. “That’s the truth.”

  “You honestly thought I’d let you seduce me at work, if at all?” she said. “I was covered in bodily fluids and wrestling a screaming elf into a hospital bed at the time. You didn’t even know what time I was working.”

  His jaw clenched. “I heard about the vampire.”

  “Yes, that’s what I just told you.”

  “Not just that vampire.”

  Alissa went pink, to my confusion. “That has absolutely nothing to do with my questions. I’m serious—and for the record, I nearly got locked up myself. You need to give me a convincing explanation as to what you were doing in the hospital.”

  “Not murdering anyone.”

  True. My ability never lied. He wasn’t the killer.

  I gave a slight nod when Alissa glanced sideways at me. “Just checking,” she said. “You know what Steve’s like. I figured you’d rather hear it from me.”

  A smile snapped onto his face. “You’re right. Thanks for warning me. Can I make it up to you later?”

  “Not happening, Bryan,” she said. “We’ve been through this, and we’re just not right for each other. It would help if you could tell me if you saw anything unusual at the hospital yesterday, though.”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t go anywhere near that room.”

  Lie.

  Huh? Why lie about something like that? Maybe because he didn’t want to imply he’d been involved… but I already knew he wasn’t the killer.

  “Then do you know anyone from the pack who had an issue with Lord Goddard?” she asked. “I know this is probably old news, but the first thing anyone thinks of is rivalries, when this type of thing happens.”

  “How’d he die? You know a werewolf couldn’t kill a vamp in combat.”

  “He was poisoned,” I said. “Well, the blood bags were. I don’t know if he was the definite target, but it’s safe to say the killer was aiming for a vampire. And I can’t promise blame won’t fall on the pack, at least until we have other options.”

  “Look, it’s probably someone looking for his inheritance,” said Bryan. “Didn’t you hear? The guy was loaded, which isn’t a surprise considering he was a million years old.”

  “A few hundred,” Alissa corrected. “I didn’t even know he had a family.”

  “Yeah, he did, before he turned into a vampire. So if they find his will, they might get the money, the fancy house… everything. But I honestly didn’t know the guy.”

  No lies there… and no real reason to divert the topic back to the hospital. He might have ended up near the room for any reason. For instance, he’d probably got lost trying to find Alissa, or hidde
n away to stop the other staff or patients from catching him. Given how he’d behaved when we’d run into him at the New Moon pub, it wasn’t out of character for him to wander into Alissa’s workplace to ask for her back.

  We thanked him and left, ignoring his pointed hints that Alissa might want to join him for a run that morning.

  “He’s definitely not involved?” she asked, after checking he wasn’t listening. “At all?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “He definitely isn’t the killer. But he lied when he said he’d never been near the blood bag room. Of course, there might have been an innocent reason he was there, so I didn’t want to push it.”

  “There’s nothing innocent about tailing me to work.”

  “You know what I mean.” I paused. “Er, what did he mean about not that vampire?”

  “Ah.” A moment passed. “Yes. That.”

  I frowned. “Something you want to tell me? Is there another vampire?”

  “It’s… nothing to do with the murder. Nothing at all, actually.”

  True… and not quite true. My inner lie detector didn’t go blaring off, but instinct told me she wasn’t telling me everything.

  “He said you had a boyfriend?” I asked. “Is it true?”

  “It’s complicated.” She chewed on her lower lip. “Okay, there’s a guy. He’s a young vampire. My age. You know, vamps aren’t generally normal humans before they turn. Not the newer ones, anyway, unless they came from outside of the town.”

  Of course. I’d learnt recently that wizards could be turned into vampires, but fairies couldn’t. The bite would kill them.

  “There’s a patient at the hospital who was bitten fairly recently,” she went on. “He used to be a wizard. I’ve been helping him adjust. Most vampires leave their families after they turn, because it causes friction when they don’t age and their families do. There’s a reason a lot of vamps are nomadic. The ones living in Fairy Falls have chosen to settle down, but that doesn’t mean they don’t remember their former lives. And… let’s just say Keith is having trouble adjusting. I was helping him.”