A Lying Witch

by Odette C. Bell

  It didn't last. I caught a flash of my attacker.

  “He had a long nose, it was… broken. It had been broken to the side,” I brought up a hand, clutched it on my nose, and twisted it to the left. I did not, however, open my eyes.

  “Good,” Max said, tone tight. “What else?”

  “He had eyes,” I managed. Which was hardly a detailed observation – most people had eyes.

  “What color were they?”

  “They were… brown…. But one… it was… it had red—”

  “It was bloodshot?”

  I shook my head. “No, it was like he’d been punched in the face.”

  Max paused, crossed his arms, and looked to the side.

  “W-what?”

  “It’s likely his magic costs him injuries,” Max revealed. “But what else? Do you remember anything else?”

  I pushed my mind into the task, but despite how tightly I was holding onto the image of my attacker, it was starting to drift. The fear of the moment was starting to wash away, too. As I listened to the gentle lap of water in the bath behind me, the gentle pop of the bubbles bursting, everything seemed to… calm. It wasn't Max's mere presence as he crouched beside me. Nope, it was time. It was as if every second was washing away what had just happened to me. No – I suddenly corrected. Not what had happened to me – what had happened to her: the victim.

  I opened my eyes, frowning. “I can't… I can't really remember it anymore.”

  Max sighed. It was a heavy, sorrowful move. “The memories are already fading. Is there anything,” his gaze flashed up to mine and locked me in place, “anything at all that you can add to your account?”

  I clutched my hands on the edge of the bath, drawing my bottom lip up and pinning it in place with my teeth. “I… I think he was in his 40s?”

  “Good.”

  “I… there’s something else. Something important.” I brought a hand up and pressed my fingers into my brow, massaging it as if I were trying to squeeze the thoughts out of my brain. “He had something.” I let my hand drop and started to clutch my neck.

  “Chi, you were not the victim,” Max said in a reassuring tone.

  I shook my head, wet hair slapping across my shoulders. “No, it wasn't that. He had something on his neck.… Kind of a tattoo. It was black, it was…” I opened my eyes once more.

  “It was what? Do you remember the shape?”

  I sat there and frowned. Frowned super hard, because the image I’d just locked in my mind had disappeared in a flash.

  “Chi?” Max insisted. “What did that tattoo look like?

  “There was a tattoo?” I asked, confused.

  Max's shoulders deflated. “The memory is gone, isn't it?”

  I scrunched my brow up, trying to force myself to remember more details, but I couldn't. I nodded my head. “I can barely,” I brought my hands up and stared at them, “remember anything anymore.” I shifted back, which was a mistake, as I was sitting on the edge of a very slippery bath.

  And, sure enough, I slipped.

  Before I could fall backward and smash my head on the taps, Max moved. He wrapped one reassuring arm around my back and propped me up.

  Unlike when I'd thrashed out of the bath after remembering somebody else's murder, I wasn’t distracted here. I was also wet. My top was soaked through because of my hair. And the thing about wet clothes is they stick to other people.

  I may have been treated to the feel of Max’s perfect body before, but this time, as the water from my hair and top transferred to his tight T-shirt, I was treated to a full view of his torso, too.

  Before we had the opportunity to have a moment, Max cleared his throat and took a step back.

  Now, to-date, I’d never seen Max be anything other than amazing. Sure, he was an arrogant git, but he was also a fairy. He could use magic, he was seriously strong, and he had god-given speed and balance.

  Except, apparently that balance didn’t hold out as he took a quick, skidding step backward.

  His boot collected a particularly sudsy section of tiles, and he tilted back.

  I pushed to my feet, trying to clutch his arm to steady him. But I collected the bath mat, and this time, there was no stopping me. One leg went one way, and I fell backward. Problem was, I took Max with me.

  Now, I know in romantic movies it's always pretty special when the hero falls on top of the heroine. In the real world? It's like being hit by a battering ram.

  He knocked the wind out of my chest, and I sure as hell didn't have the chance to notice just how chiseled his torso was.

  Instead, I made a suitable, “Oomph.”

  Max tried to push to his feet, but as he did, he clearly caught the end of that treacherous bath mat, and he fell on top of me once more. This time was softer. Because this time he didn’t fall from such a massive height. And this time? This time, his face pressed right up close to my own.

  Now, I'd been close to Max plenty of times. But not like this. I didn't just feel the entirety of his firm, taut body. I caught his body heat, too. And I could smell him. He didn't wear cologne or anything, but I just caught a whiff of his scent. It reminded me of that grassy plain, of that sunny sky.

  Max had no reason to linger. And yet, he didn't snap to his feet as quickly as he could have.

  I wasn't confused about my looks. I was somewhere roughly in the middle between plain and gorgeous. That made me normal. And men like Max don't find reasons to linger over normal.

  Except he did linger. Linger as he looked into my eyes with confusion, mind you. Not attraction – confusion. Like he was suddenly coming to the conclusion that this situation was ridiculous.

  … Or was it something more?

  He cleared his throat, pushed up, and this time didn't fall. No more comedy of errors for him, thank you very much. He stood, showing his god-given balance once more. He took a step back. He did not lean down to one knee and offer me a hand – apparently, he wasn't willing to test his luck just yet.

  Slowly, I drew my feet up, scooted over to the bath, caught the edge, and stood. Then I faced him. For some reason, I was out of breath. And my cheeks? They’d gone from ghostly, pale white to apple red.

  “I think I need to dry again,” I said.

  He nodded, turned, walked out, and closed the door.

  Apparently, he wasn’t willing to hang around in case I fell again. No more gallant acts for him. If I slipped and cracked my head, he wouldn’t be there to pick me up.

  Somehow, I kept my balance. I kept my balance because I was completely distracted. No, not by him – okay, mostly by him – but my mind also ticked back to the murder.

  It was almost gone from my body now. It had transformed from this raw, gut-wrenching memory into nothing more than a fact, like I'd read about it or seen it in a movie. Not like I'd experienced it.

  This time, I put a towel on my hair, and luckily found a stash of clothes in the cupboard that were dry.

  I even found a mop and gave the tiles a quick once over so there could be no more hilarious mistakes.

  When I was done, I opened the door. I expected to see him. He wasn't there.

  I trudged down the stairs.

  That's when I heard him on the phone. I didn't know who he was speaking to, but when I heard the words broken nose and bloodied eye, I froze.

  It had to be Detective Coulson.

  Or so I thought. Because he suddenly switched from English to a language I didn’t recognize. It almost sounded like Celtic.

  I paused on one of the stairs, and suddenly it creaked as I shifted my weight.

  Max stopped abruptly.

  He’d been in the lounge room, but now I heard him walk out. Though he’d been on the phone before, he turned it off and pocketed it before he faced me. “How are you?” he asked after a significant pause; a pause where I swore he was trying to figure out if I’d heard anything.

  I forced myself to shrug. “I have no idea how I am,” I answered honestly.

  Surpris
e, surprise, he drew his arms up, crossed them, and stared at me. “Are you sure you can’t remember any other details?”

  I brought a hand up, latched it onto my shoulder, and pulled the muscle. Then I shook my head.

  He sighed, his shoulders deflating, but he never dropped his arms.

  “… What happens now?”

  “Now, the police do their job.”

  I frowned. “So that’s it? I don’t have to do anything else?”

  He made eye contact. “That’s up to you.”

  A tight shiver raced down my spine. “What do you mean it’s up to me?”

  “I mean it’s up to you. Only you know if you’ve told me all you can.”

  I blinked, my cheeks cold. “S-sorry?” Suddenly the penny dropped, and my cheeks went from cold to totally friggin’ frozen. “You think I’m lying?” There was a seriously careful edge to my voice.

  He let his gaze slip down to the floor then ticked it back up as his lips stiffened. “Only you can answer that.”

  The indignation slammed into me like I’d been slapped by a giant hand. “Are you serious? Are you accusing me of lying about what just happened?”

  “Do you blame me? You have a history of lying, Chi McLane. You also have a history of dodging responsibility.”

  I’d felt indignant around this asshole before. I’d hit the roof around him before, too. This was different. This was colder. This was me suddenly realizing that all the compassion he’d shown upstairs in the bathroom was just for show.

  This – the prick staring me down and doubting my story – this was the real Max.

  “You absolute bastard,” I said as I turned hard on my foot and stalked up the stairs.

  He snorted. “You can insult me all you want. But understand this – there is a murderer out there, and if you’ve left anything out—”

  “Go to hell,” I spat as I made it to the top of the split staircases, stalked down the hallway, reached the right door, and yanked it open.

  I threw myself into my room, slammed the door, and, just for good measure, pushed a chest of drawers in front of it. Though it took me a hell of a lot of grunt to shift it, once I was done, and had successfully barricaded myself in, I turned. I walked over to my bed, grabbed up my pillow, crammed it over my face, and screamed.

  A second later, I started to tear up. Then I just screamed again.

  This was so unbelievably unfair.

  I’d gone from experiencing a murder first-hand to being snapped at that I was a lying witch.

  What a day.

  I expected to hear Max’s less than soft footfall out on the landing. Heck, I expected him to try to ram into the door with his shoulder. Nope, nothing.

  Nothing, that was, until I heard a tap at my window.

  At first, I thought it was a bird. Maybe something had been blown against the glass.

  Nope. I didn’t have a chance to do anything by the time I realized the window was opening.

  A second later, I watched Max the Scottish fairy climb in.

  Don’t ask me how he did it – my bedroom was on the third floor.

  I snapped up from my bed and stared at him agape. “How the hell? What? How the hell did you get in here?”

  “I opened the window.”

  “We’re on the third floor!”

  “Aye, I climbed the tree.” He reached out of the window, grabbed the end of a branch, and pulled it in.

  The branch, despite the fact it was a hefty one, couldn’t protest – not against Max’s cast-iron grip. Which was kind of funny, when I thought about it. Because here Max was showing his inhuman strength and agility by climbing up a frigging tree and jumping in the window. So why exactly had he fallen on top of me in the bathroom?

  I didn’t have the opportunity to assess that thought – Max cleared his throat, took up position in the middle of the room, and immediately crossed his arms. Were they attached by a spring or something? Did his arms recharge when they were attached to his chest like it was some kind of docking station?

  Suddenly, I reminded myself that Max was very much still in the room.

  “Barricading yourself in,” he shrugged towards the chest of drawers, “is stupid. Have you forgotten why I’m here?”

  I deliberately let my jaw drop open as slowly as it could. “And why are you here, exactly? To make my life hell?”

  He snorted. Somehow he could make even that move attractive. “I’m here to keep you safe, to stave off the curse so you can fulfill your end of the bargain.”

  “Really? Because so far you’ve just insulted me and chased me around with a knife.”

  He met my gaze and locked his jaw tightly.

  “And now you’ve broken into my room. Do you mind leaving?”

  “Why? So you can cry into your pillow?”

  Bam. He’d gone too far.

  I pushed up from my bed, real slow. The kind of slow that cannot be mistaken for friendly. “You know, I don’t understand you. Sometimes you’re like this – a total frigging asshole. And sometimes you’re like that—” I gestured fruitlessly in the direction of the bathroom.

  “Like what?”

  “Like—” I kept gesturing stupidly towards the wall. “You know, like the bathroom.”

  “Sometimes I’m like an asshole, and sometimes I’m like a bathroom. Ha. I can’t say I understand you, Chi McLane.”

  I kind of paled and kind of flushed at the same time. “You know what I mean. You run hot—” I stopped myself just in time. Because this was absolutely the wrong analogy. I cleared my throat. “Look, just go away.”

  He didn’t pause this time. “No.”

  I spluttered. “I told you to leave, now leave. This is my bedroom.”

  “I know it’s your bedroom, but I’m not leaving. Not when you’re like this.”

  “Like what – pissed off? Unbelievably angry at what you said? Look, I know that I’ve… bent the truth in the past, but those were little white lies. I would never—”

  “What? Dodge responsibility? Run away? Lie now so you don’t have to face something in the future?”

  I just stopped myself from throwing my pillow at him. It was much more satisfying to hug it to my chest and hide behind it. “You are such a horrible man. What exactly were you back in Scotland, some kind of warlord? I bet you were some brutal marauder who went from village to village—”

  “You know nothing of my past,” he spat. His whole countenance changed, morphed, became angry. I’d seen Max irritated before, but nothing like this.

  I receded, suddenly extremely thankful for my pillow as I wrapped my arms around it as tightly as I could.

  Silence. He didn’t say a word, and neither did I.

  … But he was wrong. I did know something about his past, or his magic at least. Every time I was close to him – which seemed to be frustratingly often – I heard those hooves, felt that grass, caught that far-off angry shout.

  We continued to face each other in angry silence, neither willing to start the argument again. He just stood there, simmering, those dark eyes even choppier than they usually were.

  Me? I hugged my pillow like I really meant it, like I wanted to chop the damn thing in half and crush the stuffing within.

  It took him to make the first move. He took a step forward then a step back. He drew in a deep breath and let his shoulders deflate. Then he tilted his head up and faced me once more. “None of this matters,” his voice was softer now.

  I was struck by how much I liked that voice. It drew me in, kind of like the vocal equivalent of a soft grip around my wrist or an even softer embrace around my middle.

  Though I desperately tried to tell my stupid mind to stop – as Max was a total asshole – I was starting to doubt that. Max, though obviously a jerk, wasn’t just a jerk. He obviously had a history, a prickly one. One prickly enough that the mere mention of it changed his personality and countenance at once.

  I was nosy. I knew this. My friends knew this. Heck, anyone who managed to sta
nd me long enough and hang around me for more than a few hours soon picked up that I was inquisitive. It came with the territory. Whenever I had the time, I always googled my clients, trying to find as much about their lives on social media so I could tailor their fortunes to them and make them sound more legit.

  But I’d never faced a mystery like this. I really doubted that a quick google of Max the Fairy would bring much up.

  Nope. The only way to figure out who Max really was was to see this through.

  Slowly, hesitantly, I let go of my pillow. Though a part of me still wanted to throw it at his head considering what he’d said to me, I restrained myself.

  “So… what happens now?” I finally asked.

  Max looked at me evenly. Or was it an even expression? There was an edge to it, wasn’t there? A curious one. Was Max the brute suddenly pausing to reevaluate me? Perhaps I was turning out to be less of a brat than he’d imagined.

  He briefly looked at his camel-colored leather boots, then turned his head up to face me. He nodded. “Now we wait.”

  I scrunched my nose up. “Sorry, we wait? Isn’t there a murderer out there? What if he kills again?” My voice kicked up uncontrollably, showing the choppy emotion that still swelled through my heart. Sure, Max had been a distraction – a heck of an irritating distraction – but I couldn’t forget what had happened in the bath.

  I tried to swallow my fear as I waited for Max to answer.

  “The police will track him down.”

  My brow crinkled into a scrunched up line. “Sorry? It’s just that easy? But I’ve barely given them a description—”

  His eyes flashed, and I knew exactly what he was thinking.

  I hardened my jaw and brought up a hand, using my everything not to snap at him, I kept my tone even, “I have told you everything I remember. But surely it’s not enough?”

  “Just go to bed, sleep it off, and we’ll talk in the morning.” With that, he turned on his foot and walked, not towards the chest of drawers blocking the door, but towards the window.

  “Ah,” I spluttered, “You can use the door.”

  “The window is fine,” he muttered as he was half way out. “Plus, you moved that heavy chest of drawers, and you can move it back.” With that less-than-chivalrous statement, Max the fairy jumped out of the window.