“Eh,” I said. “I’m not sure she’d have appreciated it. You know what she’s like, she’d have wanted to feel like she left an impression. Even a negative one.”
Drake moved out of the way of several people leaving the hall. “Vance, you should have brought up the time she gave us a bollocking for teleporting ourselves onto the manor’s roof.”
“If I related all the times you got us both into trouble with her as apprentices, we’d be here all day,” Vance said mildly, walking over with Ivy at his side.
“Not always me,” Drake said. “You were just sneakier about it.”
“Are you okay, Jas?” asked Ivy, handing me a tissue.
I nodded, conscious that I had Evelyn’s tears smeared all over my face. “Sure.”
“I know you were close,” said Vance sympathetically.
“No, we weren’t.” I blew my nose. “We spent every moment we were in the same room as one another arguing like hell.”
“Likewise,” said Ivy. “I’m kind of sad she’s missing our wedding, but I think she’d have wanted us to leave her off the list so she had an excuse not to speak to me for a while.”
“She’d have come up with an urgent appointment at the last minute like she normally does at societal functions,” Vance said.
“Probably.” She took his hand and squeezed it. “I know she was a total grump, but I think she’d be pretty flattered at your singing her praises. You did great.”
Vance gave her a smile tinged with a hint of sadness. I guess I wasn’t the only one here with mixed feelings. If the Mage Lord suspected any gaps in my story about how she’d died, he hadn’t mentioned it. I appreciated that, at least.
“She killed two Sidhe, I heard,” I said.
“Oh, probably more,” Vance said. “She refused to discuss much of her history.”
“You’re telling me,” said Wanda. “Even I got a tongue-lashing if I asked her the wrong question.”
“She was private, and liked her secrets,” I said. “Er, I don’t know if you’ve had a call from my boss yet, Vance, but—”
“I have, actually. I wanted to talk to you about it.”
“Oh. All right.” I should have known. I took in a deep breath, hoping that the cover story Lady Harper had left behind wasn’t about to come crashing down.
Ivy walked with us out of the town hall. “Don’t look so freaked, Jas. It’s good news.”
“It is?” I said warily. “I never thought my boss and Lady Harper being mentioned in the same sentence would ever be good news.”
“Your boss asked Lady Harper had left anything to you,” Vance explained.
Oh. Of course. For all her endless complaints, the old mage had amassed a huge fortune in her lifetime… mostly through outliving everyone else in her family.
“I don’t want it,” I said quickly. “Whatever it is.” God knew money could solve almost none of my problems.
“She left most of her possessions to the mage council,” Vance said. “And the Council of Twelve. She was a founding member. But she left you some cash, and some of her possessions from the house. We’re planning to clean the place over the holidays, if you’d like to join us.”
I’d quite honestly rather join Lady Harper in the ground than go through her things, but it was a genuine, kind offer and there was no need to tick off the Mage Lord on top of everything else.
“Vance, Jas doesn’t want to go through Lady Harper’s junk any more than the rest of us do.” Ivy rolled her eyes. “You’re welcome to join us over the holidays, though. Drake pretty much insisted on it.”
I nodded. “I’ll see what I’m doing.” Who knew… maybe Lady Harper had left me something useful in her old house.
“Also,” said Ivy, dropping her voice, “Vance and I know about the weapon. It’s gone?”
Vance’s intent grey eyes pinned me to the spot. Oh, boy. I really shouldn’t have assumed the Mage Lord would brush off the circumstances of his former mentor’s death without asking questions.
“We’ve both met the Hemlocks,” Ivy explained. “Isabel told us the item the Soul Collector used was likely a talisman. It’s definitely gone?”
Right… they’re immune to the geas. To some degree. So that meant Vance must know the Ancients existed, even if Lady Harper had been as reluctant to share information with him as anyone else.
I cleared my throat. “Yes. Positive. He and the Ether Converter both fell into the rift.” No need to let on that I was the one who’d opened the rift. I was still liable to be punished for the Hemlocks’ crimes, after all, and now one of the few people still walking this earth who might have had the clout to defend me was dead and gone.
“Good,” said Ivy. “Trust me, we’re better off without it.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” I murmured. “Is Isabel around?”
“Over there.” Ivy pointed.
I made my way through the crowd to Isabel, and this time, nobody stopped me.
“You did great,” said Isabel. “Considering you didn’t prepare a speech. I was ready to intervene.”
“Er… you know that wasn’t actually me, don’t you?” I muttered. “Evelyn felt she needed to say her piece on her old mentor.”
“I think Lady Harper would appreciate it,” said Isabel. “She did like to feel important.”
“Yeah” I said. “I suppose at least she can say an Ancient was responsible for her death. That’s kind of a badass way to go. Sorry, I’m a necromancer. We do funerals like they’re going out of style.”
“I bet,” said Isabel. “Are you heading back?”
“I’d better. Before anyone else works out I wasn’t quite myself back there.”
Now I knew for sure there was no getting rid of Evelyn… I still didn’t trust her. Maybe I should have bound her again, but for now, I left her be, and she left me alone. For the most part.
My phone buzzed. I checked the number, then answered. “Hey, Lloyd.”
“Hey,” said Lloyd. “How’d it go?”
“It was okay,” I said. “As far as funerals go. She’d have found something to complain about, I don’t doubt. It’s just so damned weird her being gone.”
“Yeah, I bet. Are you on your way back?”
“I’ll leave in five. Might take a detour on the way to the guild, okay?”
“Sure. Take care of yourself.”
I hung up, shivering a little in the cool night air. Tilting my head back, I looked up at the clear night sky and the crescent moon. My eyes stung again. I never thought I’d regret never seeing Lady Harper again, and yet…
“Hey,” whispered Keir’s voice through the spirit realm. “You holding up okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Want me to come and see you when I come back?”
“I’d like that. I’ll be waiting on the other side.”
Keir met me on the bridge, his cheeks pink with cold. “Hey, Jas.”
“Hey.” Guilt washed over me. I still hadn’t told him I was a shade, and the funeral had hammered home how quickly life was over. Even in a place where nothing ever really died.
He frowned. “Was it that bad?”
“No, just… funerals. I should be used to them, considering my job, but we usually leave after we hand over the bodies.”
He took my hand and squeezed it. “I can walk you back to the guild if you’d rather go home?”
“Actually…” I paused. “There’s something I have to tell you. And I want you to know that it’s okay if you don’t want to see me anymore, after.”
He blinked, looking a little startled. “Sure. Fire away.”
“It’s—about your vampire abilities. And shades. I have no idea how it happened, but it’s the only explanation.” I quickly ran through what I’d read in the book, and the conclusions I’d drawn from that.
His brows shot up, but he kept listening. “That makes sense. I think,” he said. “How… how many lives do you have left?”
“I have no idea. Might be a limited number, might not
.” It worried me a little, but not as much as the shade situation being irreversible. “So, your choice. Is the idea of seeing me every couple of days worse than death?”
“In the spirit realm, what’s the difference, really?” He smiled, and took a step closer to me, resting his hands on my shoulders.
“Not going to run off?” I queried.
“I shouldn’t have run the first time.”
His mouth parted beneath mine, and by the time we broke apart, I’d forgotten the cold, inside and outside.
“I have to say,” he said. “I prefer knowing you did it, not Evelyn.”
“Sure you don’t want to pin the blame on her?” I grinned and rested my forehead against his. “Don’t worry. She’s behaving. Can’t say she’s all there, but who am I to talk?”
“So you’re reserving judgement?” he queried.
“For now.”
After all, the Soul Collector was dead and gone. Losing the weapon along with him was less disastrous than the thing ending up in anyone’s hands. And Evelyn? I’d leave her be if she did the same to me. Tomorrow was another day.
I turned away from the spirit line, towards the guild, and home.
Thank you for reading!
The story continues in the third Hemlock Chronicles book, Witch’s Spirit, coming soon.
Find out more at smarturl.it/HemlockChronicles
If you want to be notified when my next book comes out, you can sign up to my author newsletter: http://smarturl.it/ELAnewsletter
I hope you enjoyed Witch’s Soul. If you have a minute to spare, then I’d really appreciate a short review. For independent authors, reviews help more readers discover our books, so if you’d like more books about Jas, Ivy, Ilsa and the others, I’d love to know what you thought!
Other books by Emma L. Adams
If you’d like to see how Jas and Ilsa met, you might like Hereditary Magic, Book 1 in the Gatekeeper’s Curse series.
Ilsa Lynn has made it her life’s goal to avoid the curse that binds her family to serve the Summer Court of Faerie, but when she discovers volatile magic inside a family heirloom, she must learn to wield it before her family faces a fate worse than death.
Find out more!
If you’d like to see how Ivy’s adventures started, you might like Faerie Blood, the first book in the Changeling Chronicles series.
When faerie-killer Ivy is hired to find a missing child, replaced with a changeling, she’s forced to team up with the seductively dangerous Mage Lord, at the risk of exposing her own dark history with the faeries—and this time, running won’t save her.
Find out more!
If you’re curious about what happened in the time of the faerie invasion, try Alight, Book 1 in the Legacy of Flames series. Dragon shifter Ember must risk it all to rescue her sister from the supernatural-hunting Orion League, even if it means kidnapping a lethal ex-hunter who'd like nothing better than to add her name to his kill list.
Find out more!
If you like action-packed urban fantasy with demons and magical mayhem, you might like Celestial Magic, Book 1 in the Celestial Marked series.
Devi Lawson, former demon hunter, is drawn back into the celestial guild when a demonic killer starts targeting the other celestials. To gain vital information, she's forced to ally with an immensely powerful warlock who knows too much about her, and if the netherworld holds all the answers, the price might just be her soul.
Find out more!
About the Author
Emma is the New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author of the Changeling Chronicles urban fantasy series.
Emma spent her childhood creating imaginary worlds to compensate for a disappointingly average reality, so it was probably inevitable that she ended up writing fantasy novels. When she's not immersed in her own fictional universes, Emma can be found with her head in a book or wandering around the world in search of adventure.
Find out more about Emma’s books at www.emmaladams.com.
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