Witch's Secret

by Emma L. Adams

  “No, because he seems to have pulled back on patrolling,” Vance said. “Perhaps as a result of the explosion which hit the other spirit lines.”

  Weird. I thought he wanted to open the spirit lines. No… that was what Evelyn wanted. Lord Sutherland just wanted power, and he’d mow down anyone who stood in his way. He hadn’t even given me a fair fight. Dickhead.

  “Now you’re here, can’t you march into his office and displace him?” I picked out another cookie.

  “That’s not how it works,” Vance said. “Besides, I’ve no desire to rule two mage councils. I’ve been reaching out to my contacts across Scotland to see if I can find a suitable replacement. In the meantime, I’ll meet with him alone—”

  Wanda shook her head. “I wouldn’t.”

  “No way,” Drake said firmly. “We’ve been through this. You ask for a solo meeting, he kills you and makes it look like an accident.”

  “I’d like to see him try.” Vance’s grey eyes simmered with the hint of a threat, and the temperature of the room dropped a little. “Was anyone you met in that other realm in contact with the Mage Lord, Jas?”

  “I don’t think the dragon was,” I said. “He did carry me over to the Moonbeam pieces when I asked.”

  “Probably thought you were threatening his hoard,” Drake said, snickering. “This is fucking wild. And Lord Sutherland had this mirror in his back room for ages and never knew?”

  “Of course he knew,” Vance said. “As for the mirror, as far as I can work out, it’s been here at least a decade, if not longer. Lord Sutherland claims it was the mages’ possession from the start, but I have my doubts.”

  “I heard it links to a place called Foxwood, too,” I said. “Is that true?”

  “Ilsa Lynn told you that?” he guessed. “Lord Sutherland kept the mirror’s existence under wraps, and every time any of us has used the mirror, we’ve ended up in that other realm. Why do you need to get to Foxwood?”

  “Lady Harper was in contact with a coven of witches who lived there,” I explained. “The Briar Coven. They saved my life. I found a letter in her house addressed to them, so I figured they might know… something.”

  Like how to translate the coded journal, for instance. Or what the deal was with the inexplicable map she’d left behind. Both were problems I hadn’t thought about for a while, but with the mirror so close, the memories came flooding back.

  Does it matter? Everyone thinks you’re dead, for god’s sake. Exhaustion dragged at my bones, and while fifteen days had passed here, it’d barely been an hour since I’d almost killed myself trying to close the spirit lines.

  Vance gave a nod. “If that’s the case, you’re free to use the mirror if you deem it important.”

  Do I? “Not as important as proving Lord Sutherland’s guilt,” I relented. “Didn’t the necromancers run a search of their headquarters… fifteen days ago? My boss was in the middle of interrogating him when the spirit lines exploded.”

  You’d think the soul-stealing spirit devices would be proof enough, but only Lady Montgomery and I had witnessed him try to use them on us.

  “Uh…” Drake frowned. “Jas, there was a search of the mages’ headquarters soon after you disappeared. They didn’t find anything incriminating.”

  Nothing? That can’t be right. “But—the witch-shade,” I said. “Did you hear about that?”

  Drake and Vance exchanged glances, while Wanda looked concerned.

  “Isabel told us about the shade,” Vance said. “She died. Committed suicide right there in the guild around the same time you disappeared. Lady Montgomery didn’t get back in time to begin the questioning.”

  Anger drove me to my feet. “Suicide? Seriously?”

  “That’s… not what Lady Montgomery really thinks,” Drake said, his tone unusually serious. “Vance managed to talk his way in, and…”

  “And?” I raised an eyebrow.

  Vance turned to me. “Ilsa Lynn told me she was certain someone else killed the witch-shade, but it happened too fast to prove anything.”

  Someone else. Like a vampire. Or…

  A chill settled around the base of my spine. I glanced towards the glittering mirror, then back to the others. “That place… it lies between the spirit lines. I thought when someone falls through the spirit lines, it’s impossible to get back.”

  “I dunno, you’re the one who fell into it,” Drake said. “And you got back okay.”

  “Exactly.” I swallowed. “I think I might know who we’re dealing with.”

  “Who?” asked Wanda, a quizzical look on her face.

  “I didn’t kill the Soul Collector.” I dropped my gaze to the carpet. “I shoved him into a tear in the spirit line. I thought I got rid of him for good, but if he survived…”

  He could be summoned using a ritual by anyone who knew his real name.

  Vance leaned forward in his seat. “Nobody else came through the rift with you, did they?”

  “Not that I saw. The only person I ran into over there was the dragon.” My head throbbed. “Maybe I should have asked him to take me to meet his friends, but I was scared of being someone’s lunch.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Wanda said. “I didn’t see any dragons when I was there, for the record.”

  “Do you remember anything else?” I asked. “From your time in the other world?”

  “Not much,” she said. “Two of those zombies dragged me into the hall and tied me to a pillar. I tried to fight them off, but there were too many of them.”

  “And you didn’t see any… gods.” Of course not. The Whisper hadn’t been there, not in person.

  “Do you think I’d have lived to tell the tale if I had?” She shook her head. “I don’t know why they spared me as it is. I never saw who was pulling the strings.”

  Drake rested a comforting arm on her shoulder. “Relax, we won’t let them take you again. Just stay away from that mirror. Does it have an off switch?”

  I shook my head, but Vance moved towards it. “It’s worth checking.”

  “I doubt mysterious otherworldly artefacts can easily be turned off,” I said to Wanda.

  She gave a slight smile. “I’m glad you made it out. I knew you would.”

  A rush of emotion hit me, and I blinked hard. If I didn’t get control of myself, I’d be in floods of tears by the time I showed my face in front of Lloyd and Keir. “I almost became a dragon’s snack. I don’t have much of my power left in me.”

  If anything, my Hemlock magic seemed to be draining away by the day.

  Wanda hugged me. For a moment, I let myself pretend we were two failing apprentices suffering under Lady Harper’s wrath again like we’d been as teenagers. Before her magic had manifested and mine hadn’t, and Lady Harper had separated us.

  Speaking of Lady Harper…

  The image of the glowing, oddly familiar text on the pillars came back to mind, and I stifled a gasp. Now I knew where I’d seen it before.

  Lady Harper’s journal.

  That… that must mean she’s been there before. She spent time in the other realm. But when, and why

  “I need to tell my friends I’m alive.” I pushed to my feet. “Is Isabel still in Edinburgh?”

  “Last I heard, she was,” said Drake. “She’s been helping guard this place when we’re busy.”

  “I knew it was one of her trapping spells I fell into.” I wondered if Isabel had told the others about her experiments with blood magic. Most likely not. Though without that amplifying rune, I might not have survived closing the spirit lines. “I wrecked my phone. That’s why I haven’t been in touch. Aside from, you know, that.” I gestured to the mirror, which glimmered back, deceptively innocent.

  Answers might well lie on the other side, but that could wait until after my friends knew I’d survived.

  Time for my official resurrection.

  14

  “You’re supposed to be undercover,” Evelyn said to me as we left the hotel.

  “
I’m supposed to be MIA,” I corrected. “Everyone will expect me to lie low. Why not subvert expectations? It’s not like I can hide from the guild. Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me if Lady Montgomery knew I was alive all along. River will have, too, even if Ilsa didn’t tell him. I don’t know about the other senior guild members, but they don’t have a high opinion of the current mage leadership.”

  “You’d better be right,” she said. “After all, Lord Sutherland will doubtless know the mages hid the mirror. It’s only a matter of time before he finds it.”

  “And we’re not even a consideration,” I said, with an eye-roll. “He let the furies carry me off like I wasn’t worth bothering with. I’d be tempted to say he doesn’t think we’re a threat to him at all.”

  A dangerous assumption to make, but I’d seen that shield of his. He and his son were both using blood magic. I just hoped I’d destroyed the last of those spirit devices.

  As for the witch-shade? A vampire could have disposed of her with little effort if they’d been strong enough, but the idea of any vampires willingly working with the Mage Lord didn’t sit right with me. Let alone sneaking into the guild to commit murder.

  The alternative was far worse. If the Soul Collector had made it back into this realm, I’d assume the psychics would have noticed, but both Mackie and Morgan wore iron bands everywhere they went now, and without his weapon, the Soul Collector was fairly weak. Call me paranoid, but if someone had tricked me into falling into a rift between worlds, you’d better believe I’d have done my level best to come back.

  “Evelyn?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Do you think he’s back? The Soul Collector?”

  She was silent for a long moment. “He’s not dead.”

  “I’m aware of that,” I said. “Lord Sutherland has at least one Ancient on his side. Who else hates us enough to ally with humans against us?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Evelyn said. “Where are you going, anyway? Ilsa and your other friends are at the guild, along with Lady Montgomery. The instant you reveal yourself to her, you’ll draw the mages’ attention. I don’t doubt they still have spies there.”

  “They’d better not.” I ducked into an alley to turn on my spirit sight in search of my allies. Sure enough, Ilsa was at the guild, along with Lloyd and the psychics. And—wait, where was Keir?

  Shit. Not again.

  “Keir?” I conjured up a mental image of him and reached out, relief sweeping through me when I zeroed in on him. He hovered there, a shadowy form, his gaze fixed somewhere ahead.

  “Hey.” I waved a hand. “It’s me.”

  “Little busy here,” he said, his shadowy outline flickering around the edges.

  “What are you doing, fighting a fury?” I asked. “It’s me, Jas.”

  “A hellhound.” He stopped, looked directly at me. “You… you can’t be Jas. She’s gone.”

  “I am Jas.” From the distant expression on his face, he was too occupied in both physical and spirit worlds to pay proper attention. “I’m alive, Keir. Where are you?”

  “Fuck—ow. Jas, is that really you?”

  “Don’t talk to me when a hellhound’s trying to eat you,” I said. “I’m on the way to Asher’s, but if you need help—”

  “I’ll be there.” He vanished in a blur of shadow.

  Honestly. I tapped out of the spirit realm and found myself floating in mid-air. It took three firm blinks to get back into my body, and at that point, Evelyn had almost walked me all the way to the market. The smell of fresh herbs for spell ingredients tickled my nostrils. The witches’ market went on the same as usual, with no signs remaining from the attack two weeks ago.

  Two weeks. Keir must have thought I was never coming back. How had he survived, considering our connection? It wasn’t the first time he’d gone without feeding on me for weeks, but he must be in a bad way. Not bad enough to avoid fights with hellhounds, though, apparently.

  I climbed down the cobbled path to Asher’s shop and pushed the door inwards.

  Isabel gasped and dropped the spell she’d been holding. “Holy shit. Drake wasn’t messing with me.”

  “Of course not.” I walked to her and wrapped her in a firm hug. “It’s good to be back. Keir is on the way, if that’s okay.”

  “The vampire?” Asher said from behind the desk. “All right, but only if he doesn’t bring any zombies. This place still smells like the dead.”

  “He’s fighting a hellhound,” I said. “They’re not overrunning the city, are they?”

  “No, but those furies keep spawning where you opened the spirit lines,” said Asher. “The mages had to call in support teams from outside the city. Meanwhile, the humans are panicking, and so are most supernaturals, considering a lot of them didn’t even know furies existed until they started materialising all over the place.”

  “I didn’t open the spirit lines,” I said. “I closed them. With me on the other side.”

  “I know,” said Isabel. “I thought you must have survived, but I didn’t know you’d landed in the same realm the mirror led to. Lucky.”

  Or not so lucky, considering who might have followed me back. “I didn’t know two weeks would pass in the space of a few minutes.”

  “I get it, believe me,” Isabel said. “Did Ivy tell you about the time she got stuck in Faerie for three years and came back and found it’d been a decade?”

  The door swung open behind me, and Keir walked in. Blood matted one side of his head, and he had a knife in his hand. Pushing the knife into the pocket of the thick coat I’d bought him at Christmas, he strode over to me and wrapped both arms around me.

  “You’re alive,” he murmured into my hair. “I know the spirit realm doesn’t lie, but I thought—I thought you were gone.”

  “How are you alive?” I hugged him back, and he gave a stifled gasp of pain. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, waving a hand and wincing a little. “Wouldn’t say no to a healing spell, though.”

  “On it.” I released him. “What did you do, single-handedly take on two hellhounds?”

  “Five.” He rubbed the side of his head, smearing the blood even further into his hair. “They’ve kept me busy while you’ve been gone.”

  “What’re you like?” I passed him a healing spell, my last one. “Seriously, how are you alive? I thought you had to feed on me or die.” True, he’d lasted a month without contact with me once before, but his vampire powers had nearly been wiped out in the process.

  Unless…

  A cold pit formed in my stomach. “She… stayed behind, didn’t she? Evelyn.”

  “She didn’t mean to,” he said, activating the healing spell. “From where I was standing, it looked like both of you were dragged out of your body at the same time. If you hadn’t reconnected before the rift closed, you’d have been stuck on this side with your body lost in limbo.”

  Then how—?

  I looked up, but Keir had averted his gaze. Over his shoulder, Asher caught my eye for a brief moment and a jolt of understanding hit me. The blood magic rune on my arm was set to activate whenever something happened to my body when I wasn’t at the wheel. It must have pulled me back into my body just before the rift closed—but not Evelyn.

  “I didn’t know that was possible.” I’d thought Evelyn and I were one entity—or at least, that’s what she’d once told me. How could we be literally worlds apart and survive it?

  “Apparently.” Keir lifted his head. “She kept me alive. That’s all.”

  “I know.” I didn’t want to say more in front of the others, so I eased a cleansing spell off my arm and handed it to him. “Did you walk through the market covered in blood?”

  “I had to.” He spoke quietly. “When you disappeared—I even tried a summoning.”

  “Whoa, really?” I raised an eyebrow. “That might have worked if I hadn’t been in my body, but I don’t think you can summon anyone who isn’t a ghost.”

  “Ilsa tried
it, too, when Lloyd begged her to,” he said. “Your friends didn’t give up on you.”

  My heart squeezed, and I forgot all about the mental image of Evelyn helping to keep Keir alive. They didn’t give up on me.

  “I need to see them,” I said. “But my phone’s still dead and I can’t go to the guild. Besides, I need to tell a certain relative of mine I survived.”

  Evelyn had made me believe she’d been at my side all along. Perhaps she figured I’d be jealous of her helping Keir, but I doubted it. Our extended separation proved our spirits weren’t as closely linked as the Hemlocks claimed—but where did that leave the binding spell?

  Isabel’s eyes widened with understanding. “Uh, I haven’t been into the forest since you disappeared. To be honest, I didn’t dare.”

  I winced. “Cordelia is going to kill me.”

  “She won’t,” Keir said. “I’ll go with you for moral support.”

  “I’ll tell your friends you’re okay if I see them,” Isabel said. “I don’t blame you for wanting to avoid the guild. Your boss was furious when you vanished, too.”

  “I can’t believe the mages wriggled out of paying for killing guild members to host their witch allies.” A spark of anger formed, but I pushed it down. Lord Sutherland thought I was gone, and as long as he did, he’d never see me coming next time.

  “We’ll get them.” Keir took my hand, giving it a squeeze. “Let’s go and tell your extended family the good news.”

  I walked out hand in hand with him. “I wonder if Cordelia’s ever been to that other realm? She must know about it.”

  Keir halted. “Wait, that’s where you ended up? The place behind the mirror?”

  We turned away from the market and began to walk through Edinburgh’s Old Town. “Yep. That’s how I got out. I landed in the mages’ bolt hole.”

  Keir gave a low whistle. “Lucky, that.”

  “Maybe not so lucky.” I gave a rundown of what I’d told the mages… along with my realisation about which Ancient might be roaming free in this realm again.