Witch's Secret

by Emma L. Adams

  Keir was silent for a long moment. “I haven’t heard any rumours about the Soul Collector,” he said. “Not a word from the guild, either. I assumed a vampire killed that witch-shade, but honestly, everything in the first few days after you disappeared was a mess. Rumours all over the place… I had to lie low, but I kept searching for you.”

  My throat tightened. “Keir.”

  “I knew you were alive,” he said. “Evelyn would have disappeared if you weren’t, for one, and she seems fine.”

  “I bet she had a party in my absence,” I said. “Invited all her ghostly friends.”

  “Actually, she just showed up at my flat every morning and then left immediately afterwards. Not much of a conversationalist, is she?”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said. “You just have to get her on the right subject. Like the superiority of the Hemlock magic and our how we’re going to destroy the Ancients and save the world.

  I expected her to interrupt then, but she remained quiet. Guilty conscience, maybe. Why she hadn’t just told me she’d been left behind and had been floating around as a ghost for the last two weeks—who knew, maybe she’d enjoyed the freedom. I might have done the same in her position.

  “She isn’t you.” His voice was a soft murmur. “In case there’s any doubt on the subject. Every morning I hoped you’d show up instead.”

  I caught his shoulder, and his head whipped around, his lips on mine, hands digging into my upper arms through my coat. I felt his vampire’s spirit brush against mine and deepened the kiss, inviting him in. He shivered, then broke the kiss. His stubble grazed my cheek as he hugged me instead, his arms warm and reassuringly solid.

  “I won’t do that to you now,” he said. “You’re fading. Badly.”

  “That’s because it’s only been a few hours since I had to seal two spirit lines shut using all the magic I had,” I said.

  “And you lecture me about risk-taking.” A smile caught his mouth. “Okay. I’ll buy you lunch and then we’ll deal with your creepy relatives. Then we’ll make up for lost time. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  We picked up sandwiches from a street vendor Keir deemed safe and ate them on the way to the abandoned train station. Evelyn remained stubbornly silent, but Keir took in every word I told him about my experiences on the other side of the mirror—and my expectation that the same mirror might lead directly to Foxwood, home of the Briar witches.

  “That should be our next stop after this.” He finished his sandwich in two quick bites. “Seems these Briars might know what’s up with the mirrors and that other realm.”

  “I’ll pick up Lady Harper’s journal first.” I licked mayonnaise off my fingers, wiping them on the sandwich wrapper before tossing it into a bin. “Whatever code she wrote in, she’s not the only one. There were markings on the pillars in the other realm which looked the same. Inside that weird hall where I found your brother.”

  “Did you find… anything else there?” The catch in his voice told me he meant, any sign of Aiden’s soul.

  “Just the dragon. Sorry.”

  He crumpled his own sandwich wrapper, his mouth tightening at the corners. “I guess the odds were always against us.”

  “I beat the odds when I came back.” I gave his hand a squeeze. “C’mon. Lloyd will skewer me for not coming to see him first, but the longer I leave the mirror, the more likely it is that Lord Sutherland finds out where it’s hidden.” I didn’t think he’d put tabs on me considering he thought I was permanently stuck on the other side of the spirit line, but he doubtless had people watching Drake, Vance and the others.

  We reached Waverley Bridge, halting on top of the spirit line. No signs remained of the damage the blast from the spirit device had caused. The line was intact, a flowing current of energy, rippling with achingly familiar magic.

  In a blink, we appeared in the forest, on a path I didn’t recognise. “That was fast.”

  Keir ran his hand up my shoulder. “I kept thinking I sensed you in the spirit realm. I knew you couldn’t have just disappeared for good, otherwise there’d have been more of an outcry from… this direction.”

  “You may be underestimating the Hemlocks’ ability to give a shit about me.” I scanned the thickly crowding oak trees. “Hey Cordelia. I’m still alive.”

  “She doesn’t care,” said Evelyn. “It might have been five minutes in this realm for all we know.”

  “I thought you were the expert.” Considering the forest had an odd relationship with time, too, they might not even have noticed I was gone. That they’d been annoyed with Isabel suggested they had, but ‘annoyed’ described Cordelia’s default state. “And on that note, why not tell me you’ve been roaming around the city alone the last two weeks while I was making friends with one of the dragons?”

  “You never asked.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, and the trees disappeared, to be replaced by the cave and Cordelia’s stern face.

  “Oh, good,” she said. “You’re alive.”

  “You noticed?” I gave a mock gasp. “Yes, I’m alive. Have you ever been to a realm inhabited by dragon shifters, which may or may not belong to the Ancients? Did you know that realm was on the other side of the spirit lines?”

  Cordelia didn’t answer for a long moment. Then she said, “I thought I told you to kill the mage.”

  “He’s the one who ordered a fury to throw me in there.” I folded my arms across my chest. “Come on, you can admit you missed me. It won’t kill you.”

  The wall of the cave folded open, revealing the hunched shape of the beast sleeping within the void. Fear crawled up my throat and even Keir took a step backwards, swearing.

  “You can’t throw that thing in my face, Cordelia.” I gestured at the giant eye. “Yes, it’s my job to defend the world from the Ancients, which is exactly what I was doing when a fury yanked me through the spirit line. A spirit line that cracked open as a result of the magic you gave me.” My breath heaved out. The aura of raw fear surrounding the hole in the cave wall didn’t help, but I’d passed the point of fear and gone straight into white-hot rage.

  “What would you have me do, Jas?” she croaked. “Trap you in the forest prematurely?”

  “If you even think about trapping Jas in here, I’ll see if you have a soul worth feeding on, Hemlock,” said Keir. Fury that almost matched my own was etched on his face. He blamed them, too, in the absence of any other target.

  “Vampire.” Cordelia spat the word out. “This is none of your business.”

  “I’d say it is.” He jerked his head at the giant furred head of the sleeping beast. “Is he related to the dragon Jas met over in the other realm?”

  “Yeah, that guy didn’t attack me,” I added. “He helped me, actually. I thought the shifters were direct descendants of the Ancients, aka our ‘natural enemies’.” I made quote marks with my fingers.

  “The modern dragon shifters, if they still survive, are not our enemies any longer,” she said. “But they did fight on the wrong side in the war.”

  The dragons had opposed the Hemlocks and fought on the side of the Ancients? Was that how they’d ended up stuck in that world?

  That is, assuming Cordelia told the truth… which was debatable, given my recent discoveries about my coven’s former relationship with the Ancients.

  “And the mages?” I asked. “Were they involved?”

  “The mages did not fight in that war, child,” she said. “The Ancients see them as the enemy, but they say the same of most humans. Kill the traitor and be done with it.”

  “I think he’s working with the Soul Collector.” Speaking the name aloud, even in the forest, brought a chill to my skin which went beyond the gaping hole in the cave wall. The Soul Collector had nearly torn apart this very forest. “Did… did you know he survived?”

  “Of course he did,” said the Cordelia. “The Ancients are immortal. They can be defeated, yes, but not killed.”

  “So why bother fighting a war
against them?” Keir put in. “There can only be one victor in the end. You’re not immortal, and if you die out, it’s over.”

  And I’m the last of the line. I gave the sleeping monster another glance, then regretted it. The magic sealing the hole shut was woven into the cave walls in shimmering lines that made me dizzy to watch.

  “Don’t you judge us, vampire,” said Cordelia quietly.

  She’d claimed not to even know vampires existed when I’d first told her about Keir, but the longer I spent around him, the more I became certain that vampires were also linked to the Ancients in some way. Keir’s own brother had made that connection, and that might have cost him his soul.

  “Tell me the truth, Cordelia,” I said. “You know what’s happening to me at the moment? I’m disconnecting from my body when I don’t mean to. Evelyn keeps taking the wheel, and I’m losing hours in the spirit realm and barely being able to walk when I come back. Something is going wrong, Cordelia, and it’s to do with the ritual you let Lady Harper use on me.”

  Keir’s mouth parted in surprise. “Lady Harper?”

  Cordelia scowled. “Evelyn told you.”

  I glared at her. “You couldn’t even be honest with me about my mentor—the woman who looked after me for six years of my life. I guess it irked you that she was closer to my family than you would ever be.”

  The forest began to fade, the hole in the cave wall closing up. “Is that what you believe, Jacinda?”

  A road lay ahead of me. Edinburgh. No. I was trying to get to the other side, to Lady Harper’s house. I swore under my breath, and then looked up at the sky.

  Burning red streaks marred the clouds, and the deafening sound of thousands of screams ripped through my eardrums. I wasn’t on the bridge, either, but on a cobbled street that was elsewhere in Edinburgh.

  “Not this,” hissed Evelyn, so close I jerked my head to the side. She floated next to me, her transparent form a jarring contrast to the blood-splattered brick wall behind her.

  “Since when could you talk to me in visions?” I said.

  “Get out of my memories,” she growled through her teeth.

  “Believe me, if I could, I would.” My voice grew more distant, and I became aware that the person whose eyes I watched through had dropped to their knees, blood spilling onto the cobblestones. Purple light flared to life in my hands: a healing spell.

  “No,” Evelyn’s voice said, through my mouth. “I will not die.”

  Then I was I was on my feet, looking back at the house behind me. Bodies filled the entryway beside the blood-splattered wall. The right-hand side of the house was a gutted ruin.

  One of the bodies stirred. A young woman, whose bloody face bore the same features as Evelyn. With a soft gasp, Evelyn crouched at her side, and let out a low moan of pain. “Not you.”

  “You’re dying, too,” whispered the woman. “They killed us all.”

  “No…” I gripped the tarmac with my bloody hands. “I can’t die. I can’t.”

  I lurched upright, running through the street, shutting out the cries and moans of the nearly-dead. Ghosts hovered all around me, moaning and screaming. The sky cracked open, spitting winged monstrosities out of its depths, but through it all, I kept moving. Rippling currents of energy crisscrossed the street, and my stomach lurched as I realised they were spirit lines. Wrecked spirit lines, torn open like exposed veins.

  I walked into the open maw of a hole in the universe and stumbled to my knees on the forest’s path. In front of me, a figure appeared, leaning heavily on a wooden staff. Lady Harper’s clothes were torn and bloodied, blood caked one side of her head, and her hands trembled on the staff, but even twenty-something years younger, I knew her face as well as I knew my own.

  “Are you the only survivor?” Her voice was quiet, but the trees caught every word and echoed them back at us.

  A croak tore from my throat. “I will not die. I will not. I won’t…”

  My vision faded at the edges, the world shrinking to this small corner of the forest. While the tangled tree roots and the undergrowth cushioning me looked real, the smell of magic surrounded everything, and beyond that, death. My death. A shadow fell over the forest path as someone else approached.

  “It’s time,” Cordelia’s voice whispered. “Forgive me.”

  I jerked my head upright and my mouth dropped open. Lady Harper held a baby in her arms—sleeping, quiet even as the world outside burned and died. The incongruity struck me like a whip, the sight of the old mage holding a child in her bloodied arm, her free hand resting on her staff.

  “Save our coven,” croaked Cordelia. “If she dies… that child is our last hope. If Evelyn perishes without an heir, we die out. And then…”

  A shadow passed over Lady Harper’s face. “I can’t promise both of them will survive this.”

  “Do it.”

  Lady Harper put the baby down in a nest of branches. My body tensed, though the child didn’t wake up. She slept on, oblivious.

  No. Make it stop. I don’t want to see this.

  Evelyn’s hand gripped mine, startlingly solid. Both of us were ghosts, trapped in a nightmare. I looked at her rather than at the scene, and her eyes shone with tears she’d never be able to shed. Through them, I glimpsed flickers of the people she’d lost—the bodies in the street. The young woman, a sibling maybe.

  In that moment, I understood her more than I ever had before. I understood her desperate loneliness, and why she’d come to care about me enough that she’d even kept Keir alive for my sake. Her entire world had crumbled, and here I was, her only anchor to life, a cage and salvation all at once.

  “Get out of my memories,” snarled Evelyn. “You have no right to be here.”

  “It’s my history, too.” I wrenched my gaze from hers, to the sight of her body lying dead on the tree roots below, as the baby—me—lit up with the glow of Hemlock magic for the first time. “Cordelia—stop.”

  Mercifully, the scene faded out. I came to, on my knees on the forest floor, my face wet with tears and my heart aching.

  Keir’s arms came around me. “Jas, it’s okay—I’m here.”

  I shuddered, gasping for breath, unable to stop the tears from flowing.

  He paused. “Please tell me you’re not Evelyn, otherwise this would be really awkward.”

  “No, it’s me,” I mumbled. “Cordelia—who was the other person in the vision? The one who handed me over to Lady Harper?”

  “She came from the Briar Coven,” said Cordelia, her voice quieter than usual.

  “I thought you didn’t know where they lived. Do you have any memories of them to show me?”

  The trees disappeared, leaving nothing but rolling hills, and silence.

  15

  “Well,” I said to Keir, trekking up the hillside. “That would explain why the Briars didn’t stick around for a chat. They condemned me to be bound to Evelyn, even when they saved my life.”

  “Yeah.” His mouth pinched. “Are you okay?”

  “I just witnessed my own death and rebirth—again—so I’m doing swimmingly. I think Evelyn’s worse off than I am.” I hadn’t heard a word from her since the Hemlocks had unceremoniously dumped us on the hillside down from Lady Harper’s old house. “I hope they let us back through because I’m not staying here for long.”

  I couldn’t forget the raw memory of Lady Harper holding me in her arms. Not only had she lost almost her entire family that day, she’d also had to bind Evelyn and me at the risk of one or both of us dying in the process. No wonder she’d kept me at arm’s length for all the time she’d known me.

  Keir and I walked up to Lady Harper’s house, and I undid the wards on the door so I could let us in. “I know it smells like a winery in here. There used to be several dozen bottles of old wine in the basement. Guess it’s a good thing they didn’t leave them behind, because I’d have probably drank them all out of boredom.”

  He gave a soft laugh, taking in the ghastly-coloured furniture of the l
iving room. “Looks cosy.”

  “I’ve been living in front of the fireplace.” I paced over to where I’d left Lady Harper’s journal and slipped the map inside it before picking it up. “I’m not exaggerating when I say this has been the longest day of my life.”

  Keir stepped in behind me. “You sure you want to do this now?”

  I shivered as his vampire’s touch brushed against me. “If the mages steal the mirror before I can find the Briars, I’ll be seriously pissed off.”

  “Hmm.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze, and when I tilted my head, his mouth came down on mine. He kissed me long, deep, his fingertips caressing my chin. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Me too.” I raised my hand to his cheek, tracing the stubbled edge of his jaw. He needed a haircut again, and the soft strands brushed my fingertips. “I didn’t have time to miss you, but I would have. That dragon wasn’t the best company.”

  “Obviously.” His vampire’s touch ran down my spine, a wickedly fast stroke that brought a gasp to my lips. “I’m friendlier.”

  “You’re insufferable.” I gave him another swift kiss on the lips, getting a quick brush against him in the spirit realm in for good measure.

  He exhaled in a curse. “Damn, Jas, you’re not making it easy for me not to lay you down in front of that fireplace and do everything I’ve been dreaming about for weeks.”

  I nipped his lower lip, enjoying teasing him. Anything to forget the forest, and the emptiness of that other realm. “We’ll have plenty of time when we’re back.”

  “Hey, you’re the vampire, right?” Drake said, letting us into the hotel room. “I’ve always wanted to meet one of you.”

  “Enough, Drake,” Vance said, with an appraising look at Keir. The two of them hadn’t exactly got off on the right foot, since Wanda had gone missing at the same time as Vance had witnessed my secret being exposed. His tone was crisp and polite, though, when he extended a hand and said, “Mage Lord Colton. I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced.”

  I suppressed a snort at Keir’s incredulous expression as he shook the Mage Lord’s hand. “Keir Langford. Have you been through the mirror to make sure there’s nothing waiting to ambush us on the other side?”