It also meant that gran told me certain things about witchlings that Maddie didn’t know. When I was little I thought it was just me and gran sharing secrets. Now I realized the real reason. Gran knew this day would come. She knew I would have to know certain things that Madison wouldn’t. That I would be up against forces that I couldn’t fight all on my own without a certain amount of knowledge.
I unconsciously covered my side with my elbow after seeing Madison’s face contort into a look of disgust. She didn’t need to know that I had a brand just like Emily’s. But she did need to get her girls as far away from Dilton as possible.
Chapter 2
I watched solemnly as Madison stuffed her girls into the car and lodged herself into the passenger seat. She proceeded to thoroughly freak out Ted as soon as the sun came up once she brought him up to speed on what we thought was going on. Even though I could sense his discomfort, outwardly he took it pretty damn well. I couldn’t imagine ever finding a man again who not only didn’t care that I was a kruxa that would be constantly hunted and living in hiding, but also a man who could stay so unbelievably cool under pressure.
Well, at least Ted pretended to be. For the girls. On the inside, he was screaming. But he didn’t show it. And that’s what mattered. They got Alissa and Claire in the car, packed up a few things that Madison always kept packed as a ‘just in case we get outed’ precaution, and headed out as fast as they could.
I, however, was left in her house with Emily. If what Madison said was correct, then Emily had no business being around her girls. They needed to get away. And I needed to stay in a house that was protected by Ted’s legally binding ownership. A house no vampire could enter without Ted’s permission. Except Nathaniel, who I guess had already been invited in after my little disappearing act.
The house was relatively peaceful as it started raining again. I couldn’t help but feel mildly relieved. I loved it when it rained. I poured myself another cup of coffee to fight off the nagging sensation of sleep calling me back to bed after a long night and sat by the window, watching as the rain poured down onto Madison’s wooden porch. The one Ted built with his own two hands. At least until a knock came at the door. The only strange part was that I didn’t see anyone walk up the front porch.
‘Did they jump the side?’
I walked over to the front door and cracked it open with a fair amount of caution, expecting to see someone drenched in water standing there. There was no one. Only the sight of rain pouring down and a flash of lightning up the street in a luminous blue glow.
I was about to close the door when I saw something sitting on the doormat. It was a letter. A letter sealed with red wax. I bent over to pick it up. The print seal was unmistakable. It was the symbol of the Catach-Brayin.
‘Shit. Shit. Shit. Madison got out just in time. They know where I am. And probably who she is.’
I stepped inside to open the wax seal and pulled out a single parchment with fancy ink gracing the front.
Miss Harper Ashwood,
Your presence is required at the headquarters of the Catach-Brayin regarding the charges set against Nathaniel Stapleton. You will be escorted by one of my most trusted guards this evening to Washington, D.C., where we will hear your eyewitness account of Mr. Stapleton’s plea of innocence for the crime of unjustly murdering Isaac Thorpe.
I look forward to meeting you.
Tobias Vallas
Any sense of relaxation I had before was gone. Long gone. Dead as a doornail. I immediately started hyperventilating. Or maybe that was the large amount of coffee I ingested until dawn when Madison scooped up the girls and got out of there. Or both. Who knows? All I knew was that the coven master of the Catach-Brayin had charged Nathaniel with the murder of Tobias’s best assassin. And if Nathaniel was found guilty, the Catach-Brayin might not see a good reason to keep me alive. If they even had a good reason to begin with. Nathaniel broke a few rules just by refusing to kill me when he first realized what I was.
I subconsciously reached for the brand on my side, wondering how much it would hurt if Tobias decided I wasn’t useful. Or worse, if I was dangerous.
“What’s that?” A voice came from the nearby staircase.
Emily was awake. She was dressed in her jeans and a new shirt from Madison’s closet.
I smiled at her with the best light-hearted grin I could muster.
“Just a letter,” I replied.
“From who?”
‘Should I tell her?’
She already knew a great deal. She had the brand of the Catach-Brayin and she had said Tobias’s name. Maybe transparency was the best policy. Emily had been through enough. Or was I better off leaving her in the dark? Didn’t she have enough to deal with already?
I gave a heavy sigh. “Tobias Vallas.”
Emily’s eyes widened. The veins around her eyes were so pronounced. Like the stress had somehow bruised them. She started shaking her head in trepidation. I immediately knew I had probably decided wrong in telling her, but what was the point in keeping the lie going when she already knew more than I expected?
“What does he want?” She asked.
“He wants me in Washington, D.C. tonight. There was an incident and I have to go clear it up.”
Emily ran back up the stairs and into the guest bedroom. I followed her up but she had locked the door.
“Emily!” I called for her, hearing the dresser drawers being opened then slammed shut. “Emily, please come out. I promise you’re safe here. Ted owns the house. A vampire can’t enter without consent. You can stay here as long as you need to.”
She opened the door to the guest bedroom and shoved me aside with more strength than I knew she had. Then she ran down the stairs without looking back. She had her shoes back on. She was planning to run.
“Wait!” I cried for her. “You can’t go out in this weather. It’s pouring outside.” I ran down the stairs, nearly taking a tumble as I went. “Emily, please don’t go running off like this. It’s not safe for you out there. Whoever killed your sister might be after you too. We don’t know why she was killed yet. Or who did it.”
“I do,” she said turning back to face me with her hand on the front door knob.
That stopped me in my tracks. “What?”
“He killed her because I failed. I didn’t do as he said.”
“If that were true Tobias would have used the brand to kill you.”
She glared at me.
“Yes, I saw the brand,” I said. Then I lifted up the side of my shirt. “Nathaniel gave me one too, demanding that I do everything he said. I’m tied to them just like you are. But if you leave this house, I can’t help protect you.”
Her eyes were transfixed on the brand, as though she never expected someone like me, someone she trusted, could possibly be ensnared by those who were probably holding her hostage.
“No,” she mumbled. “You can’t help me. No one can. I saw what you can do. You’re just like them.”
My magic. She saw me use my magic against Isaac. I had become someone else she couldn’t trust. Someone else she had to fear. There would be no convincing her otherwise.
“Nathaniel promised to protect me. And he went back in time to rescue you. He might be willing to help protect you as well. But you have to stay here with me.”
With that, Emily ran out into the rain and thunder, not looking back and not caring that I was screaming out her name at the top of my lungs. But what could I do? Get in my car and chase after her with a moving vehicle? Yeah, that would totally endear her to me and get her to listen. I guess my brand didn’t help her to feel as though she wasn’t alone. It made her feel even more isolated. Like there wasn’t anyone she could trust anymore.
I did the only thing I could think of. I called Officer Parker.
The phone rang endlessly, only for me to get his voice mail.
“Officer Parker, look, I know you’re really busy right now and you have a full plate with Samantha and everything, but
I have a bit of an emergency. Please call me the second you get this.”
I ended the call and sat back down at the kitchen table, feeling just about as helpless as I did after Caleb died. There was nothing I could do. Nothing I could say. I wasn’t sure if I would be hurting or helping Emily if I went looking for her. Maybe she needed to be alone.
No. I couldn’t stand it. I was going to come right out of my skin. I grabbed my shoes and my coat from the hanger in front of the door then headed out to the truck. I got drenched in the process of just getting to the car, but what else was I supposed to do?
I must have spent two hours out looking for Emily. The one place I thought she might have run to, her tree house out by her father’s large plantation style home, was off limits. There was nothing but TV crews and media vans parked all around her father’s property. I couldn’t go looking for her there.
I was settled on going back to Madison’s house when I finally caved. If Officer Parker wouldn’t call me back, I would go to him. Even if it wasn’t ideal and I probably wasn’t welcome while the entire station was focused on Samantha’s murder, I at least needed to let Officer Parker know she was missing. It wasn’t like her father was out there searching for her.
I pulled into the station to find that there was only one police car parked by it. It was a vehicle I recognized given that Officer Parker had dragged me into it the previous day. I lifted the hood of my coat over my head and ran inside. The rain was moving at a sideways angle this time, slapping my back as I ran. The sound of the bell ringing over the door when I entered echoed throughout the whole front lobby of the station. There was no one at the front desk to greet me.
“Officer Parker?” I shouted.
There was a dim light coming from the back of the station. It was right inside Officer Parker’s small and cluttered office. And given that no one was around, I figured it wouldn’t matter if I just walked back there and gave a small knock on his door.
No answer. Nothing. But the door wasn’t completely closed. There was a sliver of light coming from inside his office.
“Officer Parker? Are you in there?” I said before entering so he would at least know it was me. A risk granted we didn’t speak on the best of terms the previous day. But he wouldn’t have found Samantha without my help. That had to count for something.
I pushed the door open. He wasn’t at his desk. I stepped inside. There was a metallic smell in the air that made my nose curl. And the floor beneath my feet was wet. I looked down to the ground to see crimson fluid covering the wooden floor and reaching all the way under his desk.
‘No! Please god, no!”
I darted behind his desk, but I was too late. Far too late.
Officer Parker was lying dead on the ground with his chest ripped open, his eyes wide, and the veins around them black as coal. And to top everything off, his heart was missing. He was covered in mud from his long day of searching for Samantha and probably got caught in the rain while he was still at the swamp. And his skin. It was the whitest I had ever seen human skin. Even whiter than Samantha’s when her body was pulled from the swamp.
I walked backward straight into the wall and fell down to the ground.
I couldn’t sob. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do anything. Except…
‘The pocket watch. Whoever was here had to be looking for it.’
The box that held Annabel Stile’s possessions had been tossed to the other side of the office. I got up to reach for it only to find one item was missing. The pocket watch. Someone knew Officer Parker had it. They knew what was inside it. And they would do anything to get it. Even kill a policeman.
I didn’t care what Madison thought of Emily. Even if she was acting strange, she couldn’t have done this.
A shadow appeared behind me. I jumped and turned around as fast as I could.
It was another policeman. One I hadn’t seen before.
“I just found him. He was like this when I got here,” I said, quickly realizing how incriminating I looked sitting in a room with Officer Parker’s dead body and a box of evidence in my hands.
The officer saw the blood on the floor and looked behind the desk.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. His eyes darted over to me, glaring with a suspicion that told me exactly what he was thinking. Was I telling the truth? Had I really found him like this? Then he gained control of his senses and realized how preposterous that idea was. I was a small young woman in my early twenties. Ripping hearts out of men’s chests wasn’t exactly my strong suit.
“Put that down and go to the lobby. Wait there,” he ordered. “And don’t even think about leaving!”
I nodded and walked out into the lobby, tracking Officer Parker’s blood in my footprints along behind me.
When I got to the lobby, I rested my arm over my chest, doing everything I could to prevent my insides from spilling out. Two people I had foreseen meet a deadly end were gone. There was nothing I could do to save them. And I had a distinct feeling that there was nothing I could do to save Emily either.
Chapter 3
I didn’t know what time Tobias’s guard, whoever he was, would come for me. I didn’t know if he would be aware that I’m a kruxa. Or if I had to prepare in any way. But at that moment, as I sat with my knees up to my chest in the police station, I felt a hollowness I hadn’t experienced in a very long time.
‘There was nothing I could have done. I got here too late. He might have been doomed long before he first called me.’
I tried to comfort myself. I tried telling myself that it wasn’t my fault. In truth, I didn’t know. I didn’t know which course of action led to Officer Parker’s death. Was it when he said the words Catach-Brayin over the phone? Was it when he called me to ask for help? Was it when he decided that keeping evidence in his office containing a pocket watch with vixra blood inside was a bright idea? Was it when he found Samantha’s body?
I couldn’t know. I might never know. The police station was flooded within minutes. People were running about everywhere as more police showed up after getting the call that an officer was down. Each and every single one walked inside and immediately gave me a death glare. And I had no idea why. They stared at me for a moment before heading back. And not until Officer Parker’s body was taken out on a stretcher covered in a body bag as the media swarmed the outside of the station with their flashing light bulbs did anyone stop and actually give me a hint as to what was going on.
“You’re Harper Ashwood?” said one of the female officers. She had her hands on her hips and her police hat on, letting me know she was in charge. I lowered my legs from my chest and sat up straight.
“Yes.”
“The one from the TV?”
‘Uh…excuse me?’
She must have seen the confusion written all over my crinkled forehead. She turned around and went behind the front lobby desk to reach for a remote control. There was a television on the back wall. When she flipped it on. It went straight for the news. In just a few seconds, I saw my picture displayed. An old picture. One from my final senior year of high school.
My face had now been seen on national television. Along with the image of nightfall when the police strolled away Samantha’s body into an ambulance to be taken to the town morgue as onlookers watched in horror.
“We’ll have to ask you some questions, Miss Ashwood,” the policewoman said as she steered her wide hips around the front desk and waltzed back toward me. “Given that it was you who led the police to the body.”
“Who told the media about that?” I demanded.
She shrugged. “Does it matter?”
I guess it really didn’t. What mattered was that I was now at the public center surrounding what was probably going to be a murder case that would take the country by storm. And I was the ‘psychic consultant’ as the news displayed at the bottom alongside my name, that found Samantha’s body in the middle of a Georgia swamp with a chain dangling down her leg.
‘As if life
couldn’t get any worse than it already was. Oh but wait, there’s still time.’
“Follow me,” said the female officer. She turned around and escorted me to a back room. One that was clearly for questioning suspects.
The room was freezing. The smallest hairs on my arm immediately stood at attention as I tried keeping warm by rubbing my hands over my arms and wrapping my coat around even tighter.
“I’m going to need to take your shoes,” said the officer. I caught a glimpse of the name on her uniform. Officer Victoria Rosenberg. Perhaps the only female police officer in all of Dilton County if I were to guess. And she clearly felt like she was entitled to the respect she earned alongside the men. But I caught a whiff of the aura surrounding her before she shut the door with a loud clank and came over to the side of the table. She was massively insecure. Hence the ‘superior than thou’ attitude. I straightened my back and did my best to appear like she didn’t intimidate me. I may not have been a particularly powerful witchling, but I wasn’t a lowly human who would be intimidated by her attitude either. The last thing I needed was to appear weak. I had been caught with Officer Parker’s dead body and evidence from a cold case in my hands. Weakness wasn’t an option.
She took out a large clear plastic bag from the cabinet in the corner.
“Why do you need my shoes?” I asked.
“Because there’s blood on them.”
‘Oh, right. Evidence.’
I reached down for my shoes and removed them. She bagged them then set them to the side.
‘I guess I can look forward to getting my feet wet the second I try to leave.’
Then it occurred to me, the media was outside. They knew my face. And the police officers running around were already giving me death glares. They were embarrassed that they were being publicly criticized for asking a local psychic to help with the case. Or so I safely assumed. They probably wouldn’t be too eager to help me get out of there unseen. And if I drove the truck back to Madison’s house, the media would likely follow me. Hell, they probably already knew where I lived and saw the cataclysmic wreck that was my house. And now they would be harassing me outside of Madison’s house the second I tried to leave.
Witchling Wars Page 19
