by M. L. Briers
“Earnest, please,” Helena hissed out, and the woman looked scared stiff of Earnest’s admissions. She had more to do with this than being with her man; I’d put my bistro on it.
“So, you claimed your revenge by tossing him off the Point,” Gran urged him on.
“That’s not what happened,” Earnest growled back.
“Earnest, stop talking,” Helena bit out.
“I’ll not cover for you, Helena. The man was a bad one, but he was my brother,” Earnest said. “Now it’s out; it’s out. There’s no hushing it up.”
“I…” Helena looked as if she was chewing her own tongue off.
“Angus wanted to give me back my magic…”
“Only so his dark magic was more potent,” Helena snapped.
“Aye, well, I’ll never get the chance to find out, or feel that magic within me, now, will I?” Earnest offered her a dark look.
“You killed Angus?” Gran rallied against Helena.
“The man wanted his pure magic back so he could reignite the darkness here, what would you have done?” Helena spat out, lifting her chin in defiance and staring down her nose at my Gran.
I wanted to zap her plain and simple just for that act.
“Found another way,” Gran hissed back.
“And Leonna?” I asked. I couldn’t see how that crazy old witch fitted into this.
“She saw Earnest and knew who he was, his lack of magic was a dead giveaway,” she turned her nose up at him.
“And me?” I asked, taking a step forward and squaring up to the woman.
“I didn’t want you sniffing around at the Point; you might have picked up on the essence of my magic,” Helena tossed a look of disgust my way.
“And Eileen?” Moira demanded.
“The perfect cover. I know how Fiona’s mind works, the darkness had awakened, we’re all doomed – so, I sparked the gene within Ross and…”
“You bitch,” Moira hissed, lifting her hands and releasing the kind of jolt that knocked Helena flat on her backside in the mud.
Good for her, I say. To be entirely honest, I’m surprised my Gran hadn’t already done it.
“I was hoping he’d do the work for me that night in the square,” she hissed out, rallying into a sitting position, and how Moira didn’t zap her again, I’ll never know.
“You’re an evil, jealous woman, Helena McCrae,” Gran’s voice sounded like cut glass, and I had to agree with her sentiment.
“And you, Fiona McFae, getting everything you wanted, and us losing it all,” Helena hissed out as she clambered to her feet.
“What did you lose?” Fiona demanded.
“Earnest!” she screamed back. “Broken, he was broken. We could have been happy!”
“His brother’s actions weren’t of my doing,” Gran shouted back.
“That’s it, I’ve heard enough.” My heart stopped at the sound of Jack’s voice, and I spun to find the man walking from the cover of the tree line towards us.
“That’s annoying,” Duncan bit out, and I shot him a glare.
“Helena McCrae, I’m arresting you…”
“No!” Helena screeched, and I turned to find her hands coming up, palms out towards Jack, and I acted instinctively.
I forced my magic out towards her, just as she released her own, Gran and Moira did the same, and our combined magic hit her hard and forced her own magic to bounce back at her. By the time that she hit the ground once more the life was gone from her.
“Helena,” Earnest dropped to his knees in the mud, and I felt a flash of guilt go through me that I tried to jump up and down on, I’d been protecting Jack, we all had, but that guilt played ping-pong in my brain.
Jack was safe, and that was all that mattered. Although, he did look shocked to his very core.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded as he started forward.
“She was going to kill you,” Gran said, not mincing her words and sugarcoating it for him.
“She’s dead?” he sounded shocked.
“Her own magic saw her off. Think of it as karma,” Gran said, fluffing up what had really happened a little, and confusing Jack even more.
“How the hell am I going to write that up?” he muttered.
“Case solved,” Duncan said with the sarcasm dripping from his tone. I shot him a glare.
“Earnest Croon, I’m arresting you in connection…”
“No…” Earnest said, stumbling to his feet and backing away from Jack with every step the man took toward him.
“Mr. Croon, don’t make this harder than…”
But I could see what was coming as clear as day. It might not have been a vision in itself, but before it actually happened, it was playing out in my mind, step by horrible step.
Jack closing in on Earnest as he backed away – Earnest turning for one last look at Helena’s lifeless body before he took that one fateful step from the rocky ridge, and he was gone. Just like that. Gone.
~
“So, no dark magic, nothing stalking us, I feel … better,” Eileen said as she nudged the vampire seated in the chair beside her at the dinner table, and if I’m not mistaken, the look that lingered between them said it all.
Aye, our Eileen had more to worry about, in the shape of being all googly eyed for her. Hmm, a vampire brother in law to add to the werewolf one I was probably going to get.
We were turning into the Addams family.
“Helena McCrae, who would have thought it?” Dad said and brought the wrath of my mother’s glare towards him. “I’m just saying, Caitlin…”
“Eat your dinner, Donlan,” she snapped back.
I had a feeling that conversation was going to continue later when they went to their room. Poor, male, dad.
“Digging a hole,” Moira chuckled as she nudged Ross and motioned for the peas.
“The hunter-gatherer provides,” I chuckled as Ross handed them to her, and she shot me a look of contempt. “You’ll have plenty of venison; best buy a chest freezer.”
“There’s still dark magic,” Gran said, causing Eileen to tense up, and the vampire to lean in sideways towards her.
“I’ve got your back,” he whispered.
“It’s her neck she’s more worried about, Count Fang,” Moira piped up, with a smile that lasted only a few seconds before she jumped in place with a yelp.
I was as confused as the next person, and when she turned an accusing dark glare upon me, I held up my hands in surrender.
“Not this time, you seem to have another fan,” I said, and Moira’s dark glare circled the faces at the table.
I spotted it a mile off. There was Gran looking everywhere and anywhere but at Moira.
“You kicked me?” Moira looked somewhat shocked as she skewered gran with a glare.
“Hmm? I did? Foot slipped,” Gran lied.
“From where?” Moira demanded, but she didn’t really expect an answer to that, now did she?
“Door!” Gran said, pointing a finger back over her shoulder, and my dad sighed as he went to push up. “Not for you!” Gran snapped and turned her gaze to me.
I knew at that moment just who was coming, and it wasn’t due to my witchy senses. It was him, the one who I’d been avoiding and who had been avoiding me right back since that thing with Helena and Earnest.
~
I pulled open the door before he even knocked, and the surprised expression on his face should have made me smile but didn’t. It was strange, but there was this little ache inside of me like I’d lost something that I’d never really had to begin with.
“Jack,” I said, trying to sound as normal as possible while trying not to notice the bags beneath his sexy eyes or the way he looked … awkward.
“Maggie, I…” he stopped, shuffled his feet as he eyed them for a moment, “I wanted to tell you that the case is closed.”
“And did we feature in your write up as more than witnesses to Earnest suicide and Helena’s…?”
“The c
oroner’s still to decide on that, but it looks like undefined, old age type causes.”
Magic never leaves its mark unless you wanted it to.
“I still don’t understand what…” he stopped and looked away.
“Do you need to?”
“I guess not.” Jack nodded.
“Tell me, how did you come to be at the mill that day?”
“I was following you…” Jack admitted.
“You thought I had something to do with it?” I eyed the man for being the devious little demon that he was, not a real one – that might have been better under the circumstances.
“You’ve lied to me – I didn’t know…”
“Didn’t know,” I tossed back, biting down on my anger and disappointment in him.
“Shame on you,” Moira bit out, coming to stand behind me.
She folded her arms, tipped her chin up as far as she could, and she looked down her nose at him. Not an easy feat for someone who was height challenged.
“Now, girls,” Gran started, from somewhere behind my sister, but I was already well and truly finished. Finished with a man who didn’t try to see past the things that he didn’t understand. Finished with the man who would think wrong of me. Finished.
“I’m done with you, Jack Mackie,” I said, brushing my hands against each other.
And this time I meant it.
I turned on my heels and Moira made way for me to get by.
“Maggie,” Jack called, but even with Gran’s accusing stare, I didn’t want to hear it.
“You heard her, outlander,” Moira said, holding her ground. “Be gone and don’t darken our door again.”
How I didn’t like the sound of that. There was a part of me that was Moira’s biggest cheerleader and another part that wanted to tell her to shut up. The first part won the day, and I headed towards the sanctuary of Gran’s greenhouse.
“You’d best go,” I heard Gran say.
“I...” Jack grumbled something as I threw myself into the room. “Tell her I’m sorry.”
Sorry, pah! I snorted my contempt for the lily-livered, spineless, muppet of epic proportions.
“Done,” I muttered as I stalked towards the window and stared out at the big old full moon that hung in the sky and taunted me.
“Tonight’s the night,” Moira said from the doorway, and I groaned inwardly.
I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I wanted to curl up with my little ache that was growing inside of me and revel in my misery.
“For?”
“To see if that matchmaking potion of yours is going to work,” she said, and I snorted my contempt for magic, for matches, for spellcrafting, and for life.
It sucked.
“I don’t think I’m in the right frame of mind for giving someone else their happily ever after,” I tossed back.
“Why be generous? Maybe greed is good,” Moira said, and by the time I had clocked on to what she was saying I turned to find her gone.
Matchmake for myself? That would never end well, and I certainly wouldn’t want Jack, not if he didn’t want me.
“Free will,” Gran said, appearing as if by magic where Moira had been standing.
“What?”
“The thing with these potions and spells is – we add that little get out clause at the end of them.”
“If it harms none.”
“Exactly, free will. You can make a match, but you can’t assure it. Just nudge it a little,” Gran said.
“How can you be sure that it was meant to be when there’s magic there?”
“There’s a nudge, Maggie, nothing more unless you don’t use that get out clause. And I’ll let that be the lesson for tonight, always remember to use that clause. Now, finish that potion, and remember to cleanse your aura before you do,” she said and was gone before I could say anything more.
I looked down at the red cloth and sighed. Did I really want to be spell working a love potion?
Not really, but the full moon wouldn’t wait, and my work wouldn’t last until the next one. I put my own feeling aside and set to cleansing my negative energy.
I still had a life to live, even if it was to be a miserable one.
I was never going to spell Jack or any other man into my life. Fate was fate and if I was to die a lonely old cat woman, so be it.
Although, with the size of my family I doubt that I’d ever be lonely, at least, not for company, and what was so wrong with being a cat lady? Let the others have love, I would be just fine and dandy as I was, and if fate should deem to bring love to more doorstep someday – then so be it.
The End.
