“Ms. Kavanagh,” Lady Willow said so suddenly that I nearly fell forward on my face. I took the chance to nod, ducking my face to recover from my look of surprise, but I didn’t trust my voice, so I kept my mouth shut.
“I understand you are still refusing to tell us what you have done with our son,” Lord Stoirm demanded, his voice tumble of gravel and rocks.
“Wait, what?” I blanched, blinking stupidly at them.
“Understand there is nothing you can say that will appease my husband’s anger,” Willow said as she rose to her feet, her gossamer gown sweeping around her as she moved to edge of the dais.
“No, I mean,” I held up my hands, as if I could stop her from coming any closer, my eyes darting back and forth between her and Stoirm, “I don’t have your son, I swear.”
“Ms. Kavanagh,” Willow said, taking one step down from the dais, drawing my attention back to her. She moved down the steps like a fog drifting over the still surface of a lake. When I blinked again, she was in front of me, towering over me, her dark eyes snapping with trapped lightning. “You do understand the dangers of lying to the fae, don’t you?” She placed one finger under my chin, tilting my face up to look into her eyes. The sharp point of her nail pressed into the soft flesh under my chin, threatening to cut me open.
“Yes,” I managed around a swallow, trying to speak around the lump forming in my throat. “I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t lie to you. I don’t have Roane, but I know you have Owen.”
Willow stared down at me, her face going unnaturally still in that way that only the immortals could manage. It was as if you could see the exact moment when their hearts stopped beating and the blood in their veins froze. Only her eyes remained alive and I dared not look away from her. Willow had the power to grind me into a fine dust in the palm of her hand. If she willed it, she could turn me inside out and trap me in my own flesh, never dying, always suffering.
I could feel my vision going soft at the edges as I stared into the black depths of Willow’s eyes. The room around me faded away as I pitched forward and fell into her gaze and everything went black as my body became weightless.
“I see,” she said, breaking the spell and bringing me back to reality. The floor was hard under my feet and my bag was a weight on my shoulder again. Willow turned, taking her finger away from my chin. My heart was a rabbit trapped in my chest when I finally remembered how to breathe. I didn’t even mind the sting of pain under my chin when her nail pricked my skin; I was just happy that she was no longer touching me.
“She is telling the truth?” Stoirm asked as his wife climbed the steps to rejoin him at his side.
“It appears that way,” she said, sweeping the train of her gown out of her way before lowering her body bonelessly into her seat.
“But she is the one that caught Raegan,” Stoirm pressed, turning his body to face Willow.
“Yes,” she agreed.
“No,” I cried out, making the mistake of taking a step forward. Willow’s head whipped around toward me, power snapping around her body like live wire caught in a puddle of water. Her eyes were wide and wild, her fingers curling into the armrests of her chair, and I suddenly couldn’t move. A weight pressed into my chest, constricting my lungs until I couldn’t breathe. I managed a small whimper, a tiny noise begging for mercy.
When Willow released me, I fell to the floor with a gasp. I braced my hands on the cool marble floor, feeling the prick of tears building behind my closed eyes. I needed to get the hell out of here; every second I spent here I was risking my life and sanity. I could feel the lump of the jar in my bag that held my knockout powder. It was strong enough to take down an ogre, but I didn’t think I was fast enough to get it out and use it before either of the maniacal fairies in front of me stopped me.
“I did not catch your daughter,” I breathed, pushing back to sit on my feet. The room was spinning a little too much for me to attempt to stand just yet.
“Ms. Kavanagh, I warned you about lying to us,” Willow said, raising her hand.
“No, no, no,” I begged, “yes, fine, I brewed the damn spell that was used to catch Rae, but you have you believe me, I had no idea that bridge-dweller was planning on catching the Princess. I am so sorry. If I had known, I would never have done it.”
The tears spilled over, running hot and salty over my cheeks to drip onto the floor. I hated myself a little bit just then. I scrubbed my cheeks with the sleeve of my coat, trying to keep from smearing my mascara.
“So you admit it then,” Willow said, letting her hand, and whatever punishment she had building in her fingers, drop.
“No, Jimmy caught Rae,” I said, finally pushing to my feet, happy that the room stayed in place when I did. “But I did make the charm. That’s all I’ll own.”
“That is enough,” Stoirm said. I pressed my lips together. There was nothing I could say that would change their minds about my guilt, no matter how many technicalities I tried to argue.
“Matilda Kavanagh,” Willow said, her voice ringing through the room, “you are in our debt for the danger you placed our daughter in. For that we have called on you to repay this debt by returning our son, Roane, to us.”
“But I don’t have him,” I said, feeling the fight drain out of me. It was stupid of me to come here; I wish I’d just stayed home. But I knew, if I had stayed home, they would have come for me eventually, and I didn’t want them in my home.
“Then you will have to find him. If you do not, we will resolve the debt in a manner we find satisfactory,” Willow said coolly, turning her head to rest her chin on the very tips of her fingers, looking at me sideways. I had a feeling she wasn’t just talking about my life or Owen’s. By the look in Stoirm’s eye, he was planning on taking both our lives to even the scale.
“I offered that dude,” I waved uselessly behind me, “to make him a seeking spell to find Roane, but he said no.”
“You are welcome to make a seeking spell,” Willow said, turning her face to look at me again. I wished she wouldn’t.
“Great, I just need something of Roane’s and I can have it brewed tonight,” I said, a wash of relief flooding through me. “You can send that guy back to my apartment and I’ll give it to him. When you find Roane, you can let Owen go.” I was walking backward, back the way I’d come, and was just about to turn around and run when Willow stopped me with a word.
“No,” she said simply, but her voice rang through the room, reverberating up my legs through the floor. I stopped and turned back around to face her, feeling as though she was going to be right behind me when I did. I was more than a little surprised to see that she hadn’t moved an inch.
“No?” I asked.
“No,” Willow repeated. “Oh, you can make your little seeking spell, if that’s what you have to do to find our son, but we will not be doing your work for you.”
“Toads,” I cursed under my breath, gripping the strap of my bag, twisting it in my fists. “Yeah, fine.”
“Roane has been missing for three days,” Willow said.
“Only three days?” I blanched, interrupting her. Stoirm shot me a look, and if he could’ve cut me down with his eyes to lie bloody on his floor, he would have. I mumbled an apology, dropping my eyes.
“Yes, three days,” Willow said. “I understand that doesn’t seem like an inordinate amount of time to someone like you. However, Roane has never refused to answer our call before. If our son was on some sort of holiday but safe, he would have sent word.”
“Oh,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Now,” Willow said, drawing my eyes back up to meet hers. “What do you need to get this accomplished?”
“I have no idea.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. But it was true; I had no idea where to start or what to do.
“You said you needed something of Roane’s to track him,” Willow offered, speaking very slowly as if she were talking to someone with a mental deficiently. “Perhaps that is where yo
u should begin?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, “yeah, that would be good. Can you tell me where to find Roane’s token? If I could get that, it’ll be no problem finding him.”
“Do you really believe we haven’t already exhausted that option?” Stoirm glared down at me, his fingers mottled as he gripped the armrest, holding himself in place.
“They took his token? Why didn’t you just say so?”
“You did not ask,” Willow said. I had to bite my tongue to hold back what I wanted to say; even with their son’s life at risk, they were still playing their ridiculous games.
“Fine. Tell me where the damn thing was then. If I need to, I can go out there later and see if I can find the signature of the person who stole it.”
Willow and Stoirm shared a look, the brief and fleeting flutter of a butterfly’s wings, but it was enough to tell me they didn’t really want me to know where Roane’s token had been. I guessed more than one fairy token was out there.
“You might want to find different locations for everyone’s tokens,” I said with a shake of my head, earning another flesh-searing glare from Stoirm.
“The location will be delivered to you should you need it,” Willow said, though it sounded as though it pained her to agree to it. “Anything else?” Willow arched her dark eyebrows at me.
“Well, this is probably going to take up a lot of my time,” I said, letting my words trail off as I tried to screw up the courage to say the rest.
“Yes?”
“So, I probably won’t be able to take on a lot of my regular clients, and I’ll probably have to buy some supplies and travel.” I swallowed, positive they could hear it even at this distance.
“Money,” Willow said it as though the word were something filthy, obscene.
“Yes, money,” I said, lifting my chin in the air, taking courage from her offense.
“I believe you were paid to cast the spell that caught our daughter,” Stoirm said, his voice like rocks pelting my skin, making me flinch.
“Of course I was,” I said through gritted teeth. “It was a job and I don’t work for free.”
“Interesting that you don’t want to take the blame for catching our daughter, but you don’t deny taking money for what you did,” Willow said, turning her face to look at her husband. His pale skin was starting to run red, the crimson blush creeping all the way up to his dark hairline. Willow laid one delicate hand on his wrist, and he slumped back. It was only then that I realized he was getting ready to come out of his seat.
“Look, I’m not going to get caught up in your fairy word games, all right?” I said, squaring my shoulders. “You’re not going to trick me into saying something that’ll screw me over.”
Willow pursed her lips as she considered me. I could almost watch the play of thoughts race through her eyes. Stoirm however, was an open book; tiny beads of sweat were actually forming on his reddening forehead. I don’t think I had ever seen a Fae lose their cool before. A low buzzing broke the silence, and I felt my phone vibrate inside my bag, against my thigh.
“Whoa, you get a signal down here?” I asked, unable to help myself. I dug into my bag and saw Joey’s bright face on my screen. I rejected her call and shoved the phone back into the depths of my bag, turning my attention back up to the waiting Lord and Lady.
“Well?” I asked. My patience had finally run out and, with it, my fear. If they wanted to kill me, they would have done it by now, but here I was, still alive and breathing.
“Very well,” Willow said. “A payment will be delivered to your home later today, but only half. You will receive the other half when we have our son.”
“Have you considered the possibility that Roane might be, I mean, I don’t know, but there’s always the chance he could already be,” I huffed out a breath and finally said the taboo word, “dead.”
“You better pray that he is not,” Stoirm hissed.
“Right, of course,” I said, “but…”
“I think we are finished here,” Willow said. She lifted a hand and beckoned to someone behind me. The fae that had escorted me into the room materialized out of the shadows at the back of the room. “Fallon will escort you to Roane’s chambers so that you can retrieve something of his to perform your little spell.”
I glanced over my shoulder and watched the tall fairy approach, stopping a few feet away from me. He didn’t even flick his eyes my way. Apparently I wasn’t worth noticing. Maybe it was how short I was? I turned back to ask the Lord and Lady about Owen, to see if I could bargain for his freedom, but their thrones were empty, and only Fallon behind me and I remained in the audience hall.
“I guess we really are finished,” I said, shaking my head. I turned around to face Fallon, tucking my hair behind my ears. “All right, Chuckles, looks like it’s just you and me. Lead the way.”
I made a sweeping gesture and bowed at the waist. I don’t know if it was the flourish or the new nickname, but Fallon finally deigned to look at me, even if it was with an arched brow and the faintest curl to his upper lip. With a sniff nod, he turned on his booted heel and stormed out of the room, not waiting to see if I was following him.
I had to practically jog to keep up with Fallon’s long-legged strides, just another reminder what a bitch it was to be five-foot-three. Fallon led me through a twisting maze of halls until I was panting and a fine sheen of sweat had formed on my forehead and I was suddenly wishing I hadn’t grabbed my jacket on the way out of the door.
Eventually Fallon’s pace slowed as we approached an ornate wooden door. It was as dark as the earthen walls surrounding it. Intricate carvings decorated it in the formation of an aged tree with roots that disappeared into the bottom of the door while the leaves faded into the top.
I bent over at the waist, pressing one hand into my side where a stitch had formed, while I tried to catch my breath. I glanced up to give Fallon a piece of my mind when I caught him smirking down at me. Anger boiled inside of me, a white hot heat that stole whatever curses where about to fly out of my mouth. With another sniff, he faced the door again and touched the door with his fingertips. Within the depths of the wood, I heard a catch release just before the door swung open. I had a feeling only a fairy’s touch could’ve performed that little trick.
“’Scuse me, Chuckles,” I mumbled as I shoved passed him, hip checking him out of my way as I stepped through the door. I heard him mumble something equally flattering to me before he turned around and stormed off, leaving me alone, surprisingly enough. I mumbled a few more choice compliments for Chuckles before I yanked the strap of my bag over my head and practically threw it on the floor.
“Whoa,” I said, stopping mid-motion as I was unbuttoning my jacket, finally taking a second to look around the room. My entire apartment would fit inside of Roane’s room and then some. I made a mental note to let the fairies know that my going rate was double what it really was.
Roane had decorated his room in human-teenager-chic. There were dozens of rock band posters plastered on one wall; so many they had started to overlap each other like some sort of psychotic collage of black and white. His bed, a enormous California king-sized bed, was draped in black, from the sheets to the pillow cases to the comforter. There was a massive desk taking up one whole corner of the room that was covered in computer monitors and keyboards. The blue light cast a haunted glow to that edge of the room. There was clothing just everywhere. I don’t think I’d ever owned that much clothing in my entire life.
I picked my way through the room, going for the desk first since it appeared to be the place he spent most of his time, if the clutter was anything to go by. One monitor was frozen on a scene of some multiplayer role-playing game, his character a tiny waif of a human archer, sitting alone in a tavern. I glanced at the next monitor and blinked twice before reaching out to shut it off.
“Thanks, Roane, like I needed to see two nymphs in that position,” I whispered, trying to shake off the image, hoping it wouldn’t be the thing I
saw every time I closed my eyes for the next month.
The third monitor had no screens open and was conspicuously showing a mundane desktop. I grabbed the mouse and pulled up the web browser, checking his recent history. Unsurprisingly, he’d cleared it for the last month.
“Of course, cuz that’s more important than turning off the porn.” I blew a stray strand of hair out of my face and closed the browser, sure the clue I’d need was hidden in its depths, but I knew very little about computers, so it was a lost cause.
There was nothing on the desk that was personal enough to use for a seeking spell. Oh sure, he used the keyboard and mouse enough to leave an imprint, but they weren’t important to him, so they wouldn’t work. I walked over to his dresser and found his collection of goth-rocker jewelry. Practically everything was black leather and spikes.
I shuffled through the spiked cuffs, wallets with various sized chains, and silver earrings, many in the shapes of daggers and fangs, but nothing called out to me. I was just going to give up and start pawing through his clothing when I saw the tiny trinket box, nearly lost among the mess. Hidden inside was a simple silver ring.
There was nothing special about it at all, no engravings, no designs, nothing, but it was obvious by the smoothed edges and slightly lopsided shape that he wore it almost every single day. It was even warm to the touch, as if part of Roane’s inner magic was hidden inside of the one metal fairies could touch. It was so much like Owen’s ring, on a string around my neck right now, that my breath caught for a moment. I swallowed past the lump in my throat and pushed those feelings down.
“Gotcha,” I whispered, dropping the ring back into the box and closing it with a snap before stashing it in my bag. I could feel my phone vibrating again as I slung my bag over my head. Situating the strap across my chest, I bent over to pick up my jacket. Digging into my bag with my free hand, I found my phone. I had just missed another call from Joey.
Wytchcraft: A Matilda Kavanagh Novel Page 6
