Vervain and a Victim

by Ruby Loren

  “Told me what?” I asked, getting the vampire’s attention back on me for a second. If I was going to die tonight, I wanted all the answers I could get before the lights went out.

  “I’ll tell you later when the job is done,” Kieran said in mocking tones. “I was telling the truth when I said my kind don’t tell lies. I used you to get him where I wanted him to be, but I meant the rest.”

  I looked at him and realised that he was crazy, really crazy. Now that I thought about it, it made a lot of sense. There were probably very few people who could live for centuries, or even longer, and keep their sanity after all that they’d seen. The thing across from me that looked like a man was nothing of the sort. He was a monster. And I wasn’t going to roll over and let him win, even if it cost me everything.

  “Hazel…” Jesse started to say, probably sensing that I’d made up my mind. But I wasn’t reaching for my magic. I had a much more direct plan of attack.

  I head-butted Kieran as hard as I could, taking advantage of his momentary lapse of attention courtesy of Jesse’s warning. Unfortunately, it didn’t have much effect, beyond making me feel like my head was splitting open. Worse still, the hands around my throat started to tighten.

  “Or maybe I’ll just end you both, destiny or no destiny,” Kieran hissed.

  I braced myself for the inevitable.

  Instead of black spots in front of my eyes, and a short sharp exit from the mortal coil, I heard shouts of pain. The hands around my throat relaxed for a second. It was all I needed to get loose and stumble away from the vampire, reaching for that boiling magic and pulling out the weapon I knew I’d been waiting for ever since I’d met the vampire. A wooden stake with threads of gold running through it was in my hand.

  “Throw it to me!” Jesse shouted, suddenly next to the vampire.

  In that moment, I felt that Jesse and I were a team. We were meant to be working together. I threw that stake with deadly accuracy. Jesse seized it in midair. The next moment, he was drenched in blood, and there was no more vampire. Just Jesse and a bedraggled looking black cat.

  “Hedge?!” I said, recognising my other large kitten. I knew he lived a mysterious life, having been born a feral, but I hadn’t realised it was this mysterious… or connected to Jesse.

  I looked at the blood-soaked man with the amber eyes.

  “Thanks, Hedge. I knew I could count on you,” Jesse said, never taking his eyes off of me. The stake was still in his hand, but even as I focused on it, I willed it to fade away.

  The normally silent cat opened his mouth and meowed. That’s when I saw it again - the same blue flash of light I’d seen right after Jesse had abandoned me in the clearing in the middle of Wormwood Forest. Jesse opened his hand and a blue spark jumped between the pair - so fast that if I hadn’t automatically been using witch sight, I might have missed it.

  And then it all made sense.

  “He’s your familiar,” I said, before making a noise of disgust. “I don’t believe it. Has he been spying on me for you all this time? Is that why he arrived with Hemlock? Even way back then?”

  “No, we only found each other when I came to Wormwood,” Jesse said, a frown creasing his forehead. “It’s not what you think. I’m not what you think.”

  “Then you’d better start explaining things to me because at the moment, I feel like everyone knows more than I do, even about myself. What did that vampire mean? He made it sound like he knew who I was?” I frowned. “And what are these deals about? Is it because you’re a…”

  “Hazel,” Jesse said, cutting me off. “Can I get cleaned up and then we can talk about it?”

  I considered. It would be the reasonable thing to do, to allow him that time, but something told me if I let this go now, I would never get another chance to make him come clean. He’d have time to think up more excuses, and I’d find myself with more questions than answers.

  He saw my thoughts written across my face. “Fine. But you don’t understand, and I know you’ll say ‘make me understand’, but I can’t, not yet. It isn’t the right time.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Are you Dumbledoring me?”

  Pure confusion flashed across Jesse’s face for a single moment before clearing. “What? No! It’s different.” he waved a hand. “You think I’m a devil, don’t you?”

  “The devil?” I raised my eyebrows at him.

  “No. That’s different. There’s not…” He shook his head. “A devil. A creature who engages in devilry and deal making. You know the folklore, don’t you?”

  “You mean like the Devil’s Jumps?”

  “You know the whole story?” Jesse asked.

  I nodded. “A witch challenged the devil to race across the jumps. She on her broomstick, and he jumping across the hills. When she won, he made a deal that if anyone should bring a silver coin and an old cauldron to the top of the first jump it would be exchanged overnight for a new cauldron. In those days, I think that was a pretty cheap way to upgrade.” I’d pumped Heather for more details when I’d been struggling for new leads in the case and trying to pad my article for Tales of Wormwood. Little had I known, the finished piece would need no padding at all.

  “Close enough. That’s a good example of devilry and ego, when devils refer to themselves as ‘The’.” He shook his head.

  “So you are a devil. The same one who lost the race?”

  Jesse laughed and shook his head. “How old do you think I am? No. And that wasn’t the reason I was up on the hill when you were there. I genuinely set up motion detectors to catch the killer. That was when I thought…” He looked down at the blood covering his shirt and then towards the town hall. “I suppose I thought something like this would happen.”

  He looked at me with his eyes that so perfectly matched my own, and quite probably held the secret to everything that I was. “I’m not exactly a devil. I make deals but… when I came to Wormwood, I became something more than that. When I was young, I made a terrible mistake. This is where it led me, but it was only when I arrived in town that Hedge found me and I realised… I realised that I’d missed out on the person I was supposed to be, keeping it hidden inside. And all because I messed everything up by making a bad choice.”

  He ran a hand through his blood-slicked hair and looked at his palm in disgust when it came away red. “Something brought me to this town and to you. I don’t know what. But now I’m here… I think I know what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to be here for you, for some reason.” His forehead creased up in a convincing imitation of confusion, but I’d been observing Jesse Heathen every chance I got. I knew there were still a lot of things he wasn’t telling me.

  “Why are my eyes amber?” I asked him, hoping that I’d get a straight answer to one question.

  “I’m not actually sure. I can hazard a guess, which would be that you’re stuck between worlds in a similar way to devils. But you aren’t one of us. I can tell you’ve never made a deal.” His lips thinned into a sorry smile for a second.

  “I don’t understand half of what you’re saying.” My eyes implored him to tell me more.

  “I’m trying, Hazel, but I don’t know that much myself. We are both in the dark. You just have to believe me. Trust me.” He walked over to me, and suddenly, we were just inches apart. The blood covered man and the nearly strangled woman. We both looked the worse for wear.

  “I don’t understand,” I repeated, searching his eyes for more of the truth.

  “I don’t either. I’ll tell you more about my past and the deal I made with your mayor, I promise. I’ll tell you everything I can. I thought that by keeping it a secret, there might be a chance that nothing like tonight would ever happen, and that this place would go back to being a quiet little town, but it’s not going to happen. Things are just going to keep getting worse. Can you feel it?” He narrowed his eyes for a second and I silently acknowledged that it was true. It did feel that way.

  I looked into his eyes that held so much pain and world wear
iness. When Jesse Heathen had walked into town I’d seen perfection - a man who could charm all of Wormwood without breaking a sweat. But it had all been an act. That this was the real Jesse. Finally, he wasn’t hiding any more.

  “We have to talk about all of this,” I said.

  “We will. I promise. But right now, I have to go. Something is coming here tonight.” He looked at me with his head tilted to one side and an unreadable expression on his face.

  I frowned for a moment before the sense carried over to me. There was a heaviness in the air. It was as if there was a huge thundercloud hanging over Wormwood, and at any second, a dam was going to burst up in the heavens and drown the entire town. “What is that?” I breathed, glancing upwards, even though I knew there was nothing physically there.

  “Just another part of our destiny,” Jesse said, before dissolving into shadows and leaving me alone with a mess of gore splattered on a wall and a bedraggled feline.

  I glared at Hedge. “Traitor.”

  He blinked his yellow eyes at me, before trotting off into the night. It was clear where his loyalties lay and they certainly weren’t with me. “That is such a cat thing to do,” I muttered, furious that I hadn’t seen it from the very start. More confusing was that Jesse - who had confessed to being a devil - also had a familiar. I felt like I needed to go home and break out all of the books on magic that the Salems owned. I needed more answers.

  In the end, I just settled for going home.

  The mayor and his mysteries could wait for another day. Wormwood wasn’t going to end tonight.

  Or so I thought…

  “Hazel, dear, you’re back! We’ve been trying to catch you for days,” Aunt Minerva greeted me, stirring a cup of tea that she’d just brewed.

  “Oh?” I said, smiling with all the politeness I could muster. It had been a long and confusing night of drama already. I didn’t know if I was ready to add a good old fashioned family fight to that.

  “We might have found something out about your magic, but it’s kind of nuts,” Aunt Linda said.

  My ears pricked up. “What do you mean kind of nuts? As in… there’s something wrong with me?” I was on high alert after everything Jesse had sort of told me tonight.

  “Of course there isn’t. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” Aunt Minerva reassured me with a warm smile.

  “We think we’ve found out some really juicy stuff.”

  “It’s about your magic,” Minerva cut in, giving the sensationalist Linda a strong silencing glare. “We think that it may have something to do with your…”

  I never heard the end of the sentence. At that exact moment, there was a loud banging on the shop door.

  We all turned and looked out, but it was late enough at night that the streetlights had been turned off. It was impossible to see who was knocking on the door.

  The banging came again, louder than before.

  “I guess someone can’t wait until morning for their spell supplies,” Linda said, rolling her eyes at me, before strutting across the shop floor to the door. “I’m coming! If you break the glass, I will break you.”

  I was still smiling when she opened the door and revealed the man in black. My first impression was that this man understood the fine art of tailoring because he was dressed to kill. My second observation was that he was a magician - an incredibly powerful one. All of the hairs stood up along my arm.

  “Oh no,” Linda said, her face turning white.

  “Who is he?” I said, turning to Minerva and discovering that she’d lost all colour as well. It was like being in a room with a couple of ghosts.

  “He’s from the Witch Council,” Minerva managed to spit out, even as Linda was slowly trying to back away and reach for one of the oversized crystals that had been a part of the shop’s stock since the dawn of time.

  “It’s not possible,” Aunt Linda muttered over and over again, like she was stuck on a loop.

  “Linda Salem, you are under Council arrest for crimes against the Council. Your conspirators will also be tried,” the man in black announced, glaring at each of us in turn.

  Linda spun to face me, her eyes wide with shock. She opened her mouth to tell me something… and that was the last I saw of my aunt and the man in black. I blinked and they were gone.

  I turned to my remaining aunt for an explanation.

  Minerva stirred her tea thoughtfully for a couple of moments, before finally looking up. “In case you’re wondering… we’re in a lot of trouble.”

  Books in the Series

  Mandrake and a Murder

  Vervain and a Victim

  Feverfew and False Friends

  Belladonna and a Body

  Aconite and Accusations

  Prequel: Hemlock and Hedge

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  Ruby Loren

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