Dismayed, Fatin says, “You would let it kill us?”
I cock my head to the side. “Would you blame me?”
Fatin’s Adam’s apple moves up and down like he just took a large gulp of something as he ponders my question. In amazement, he finally says, “You have all that power yet you will let us die.”
Oh. My. God. “Are all Witches cowards?” I spit out. “You guys are supposed to be the most powerful among your kind and you want to hide behind me?! The person you want to see dead so badly you ambushed my house and tried to exercise my parents? You can’t have it both ways, Fatin. You can’t hate me and want to kill me one minute and then want me to be your savior the next. Man up, save yourselves!” Would I let the Skin Walkers kill him or Sylar or any of the Witches if I could stop it? No. I am not going to tell him that, though. Let him stew in his own juices for a while.
“Xandra,” Kallen says. “We should rouse the others to help in our search.”
His timing is perfect. I spin around and walk out the door leaving behind five stunned Witches.
Dismayed, Fatin says, us?"ithout me even realizing it?" tries to kill any more of us." see for yourself. Kallen and i hat the k
Chapter 26
Five minutes later, I am in the library with Kallen, Kegan, Alita, Adriel and Tana. “That’s the story so far,” I tell them, finishing my report on the details of the evening.
“From the description we have given, do you believe these creatures are Skin Walkers?” Kallen addresses his question to Adriel.
Adriel sighs. “Like you, I cannot imagine what else they could be. Have you seen the cat again?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I wasn’t really looking for it, but I’m pretty sure it disappeared after bringing us to my grandfather’s room.”
“I don’t get it,” Kegan says. “If you believe the cat is a Skin Walker as well, why would it rat out the other Skin Walkers like that?”
“Perhaps they are just showing us how vulnerable the Witches are,” Adriel muses.
“Maybe the cat doesn’t agree with what the others are doing,” Alita chimes in. She always wants to believe the best of everyone, even talking cats.
“That does seem the most plausible,” Tana says.
Kallen surprises me by saying, “I agree.”
I give him a puzzled look. “You’re on the cat’s side? I thought you believed all Skin Walkers are bad?”
He shrugs. “I used to think all Witch Fairies were bad. I suppose I could be wrong again.” I throw the chair pillow at him.
“Maybe they had everything set to go and were just waiting for us to arrive,” Kallen says.
“So many maybe’s,” I moan. “Why can’t bad guys wear signs that list the reason they are pissed off and what they plan to do?”
“Maybe you could bring that up at the next bad guy symposium,” Kegan teases. He’s lucky I don’t have another pillow to throw. Lucky for me, Kallen does. He throws it harder than I would have, too.
“I’m serious, why now? Why start attacking the Witches right after we show up?” I ask the room in general. “How would they have known we were coming?”
There’s a light knock on the library door and Jadyn’s head peers around it. “I came to check on you. Gunnar woke me and told me what is going on.”
“Why didn’t my grandmother mention you?” The words are out of my mouth before my brain even told me I was thinking them.
Jadyn’s eyes widen and she opens the door fully. “She did not mention me?”
“You have too many tells to continue lying to us,” Tana drawls. “What do you know of a black cat that can speak?” She sounds accusatory.
Nervous now, Jadyn says, “A black cat? I’m afraid I don’t know anything about it.” Tana’s right, she does have tells. Jadyn’s pupils dilate and her hands move to her hair to smooth down the locks, sort of like a black cat would groom itself.
“Seriously?” I moan. “I was actually starting to like you.”
“I don’t know what you mean. Perhaps it simply slipped your grandmother’s mind. It must have been ages since you spoke to her last.”
“I spoke to her yesterday morning before we came here.”
“Oh.” She didn’t have a lot of options in how to respond to that. At least she didn’t pick another lie.
“What is your game, then?” Kegan asks her. “If you did not work for Xandra’s grandmother, as you apparently did not, why do the Witches believe you had?”
Jadyn drops the pretense of being an assistant. “I have the ability to make people feel as if they have known me for quite some time. It was easy to slip in here and convince them I have been here for ages.”
“Why, so you could let your kind in to slaughter the Witches?” Adriel asks.
Jadyn starts at the sound of Adriel’s voice. Man, she is way more frightened of Adriel than she is me. I’m starting to get a complex here. “No, that is not the reason at all. I came to protect the Witches.”
“Why do the guilty always say things like that?” I muse to no one in particular. “You’d think they would at least try to be cleverer than the last.”
“Why were we not victim to this glamour of yours?” Kallen asks. Good question. I don’t feel like I’ve known her for ages.
“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Jadyn admits. “It would appear that Fairies and Angels have some sort of resistance to my suggestions.” She sounds disappointed.
“Sorry to screw up your plans,” I snark. “Where are your friends?”
“They are not my friends,” Jadyn says as she had about the Witches.
“Do you have any friends?” I ask just to be mean. Here I am, antagonizing my enemy again.
Her answer isn’t what I expect. “I have very few close friends amongst my own kind, unfortunately.”
“Why is that?” Kallen asks.
Jadyn’s expression becomes fierce. “I do not have the same values as many of my kind. I am part of a minority that is trying to change our culture.”
“How did you get here?” Adriel asks. “This realm, like many others, was sealed to you.”
“It was not a true purge. There were a handful of us who were able to avoid being exiled. Since that time, there has been civil unrest in our small community. There are those among the Skin Walkers who still harbor ill will towards those who rose against They do not believe our ancestors committed acts worthy of exile.”
“How noble of you,” Tana says dryly.
“So, let me get this straight,” I say, trying to wrap my head around what she’s saying. “For a thousand years your kind has lived under the radar in this realm. During this time, factions of you have been constantly at odds with each other? It seems someone would have noticed you at some point during the last millennia.”
A sly smile forms on Jadyn’s lips. “As you have experienced, we are able to move among Cowans and Witches without rousing suspicion.”
“Why don’t you leave a magical fingerprint?” Alita asks. Good question.
Jadyn sighs. “May I sit down?”
“Are you going to answer our questions?” I ask.
She inclines her head. “I will.”
“Okay then,” I sweep my hand towards a chair.
“They do not leave a magical signature because they can only perform earth magic,” Adriel says.
I don’t know why that’s significant. “I thought Witches perform earth magic. They leave a magical fingerprint.”
“It is different,” Jadyn says. “We are only able to perform magic that is directly associated with the earth.”
Huh? Slowly, a memory trickles to the front of my brain. “The spell you performed on Aiden when we first got here. You had a twig or something in your pocket.”
Jadyn smiles like I just figured everything out. “That is correct.”
That is not helpful. I look to Adriel. “I still don’t get the difference.”
Adriel’s face is grim. “I should have figured this out a
t the time. The spell she performed tied her victim to the earth. Literally. Skin Walkers are able to commune with nature.”
“What does that mean?”
“I asked the roots in the ground to hold him in place,” Jadyn clarifies. “Skin Walkers are very much in tune with nature. We prefer to live away from others, living off the land as we were meant to do.
It sounds like they live in communes or something. “Oh.” What else is there to say to that. I think I’ll go with, “What do you really look like?”
That makes Jadyn uncomfortable. “We look like Cowans and Witches.”
“There is one difference” Adriel says.
Jadyn glares at her. “I have pointed ears,” she admits. She pulls back her dark hair and reveals ears like an elf’s. “Other than that, this is my true form.” So, yes to my Humanoid question from earlier then.
“How long does your kind live?” I ask, my curiosity overflowing now.
“Perhaps we can discuss biology later,” Kallen says. “Right now, we should focus on finding the one who wants to kill us.” He gives Jadyn a pointed look. “Unless she is already in the room.” There is no heat behind his words. He doesn’t think it’s Jadyn.
“That would be my brother,” Jadyn says, keeping her head high but it’s obvious she’s in emotional pain.
She’s going against her own family? I can relate to the feeling. “Sometimes families suck,” I mutter.
This garners a small smile from her. “Indeed.”
“Why did you come warn us about my grandfather in cat form?” I ask. “You could’ve just knocked on the door.”
“I was trying to give you a clue,” Jadyn replies, “as I have tried to do with the security team here for quite some time, but my attempts have been futile.”
I shake my head. “All you did was make Aiden think he was going crazy.”
Jadyn nods her head once. “So I discovered.”
“Do you know where your brother is now?” Kallen asks.
“Somewhere on the grounds is all I can tell you.”
“What does he look like in his true form?” Kegan asks.
Jadyn turns to him, “It does not matter for he has not been in his true form in quite some time. He is constantly changing, making it difficult to keep up with him.”
Frustrated with her answers, my words are short and clipped as I say, “If you can’t be more helpful than that, how do you expect us to stop him?”
“Oh, a mouse,” Alita gasps. She gasps louder when the mouse elongates until it becomes a man. There are a few other gasps around the room, as well.
Kallen and Kegan are on him instantly. Each grabbing an arm, they hold him in place and I feel magic rushing from both Fairies. They are making sure the Skin Walker cannot change shapes again.
“Conor,” Jadyn snaps, “I told you to let me handle this.”
After a glare in both cousins’ directions, Conor says, “Andrew is hitting critical mass. We do not have time for lengthy discussions of heritage and family relations. We must act now.” Kallen nods. He may not trust the Skin Walker, but he feels the same way about the situation.
“Who is this?” I ask Jadyn.
Clearly not happy with him, she says, “He is my impetuous little brother.”
“Do you know where your brother is?” Kallen asks him.
“Yes, I do.”
With a silent communication, both Kallen and Kegan drop their hold on the Skin Walker. “Take us to him.”
“First, why is he so gung ho to kill off the Witches?” I ask, still needing some back story for this to make sense. “I thought you were tricksters, not killers.” I leave out the malicious part, it seems contraindicative to the conversation.
“As I explained, there are those among us who harbor resentment against the Witches for exiling our kind,” Jadyn explains. “As for us being tricksters, yes, there were those among us. It is important to note, though, the concept was greatly exaggerated in the magical community. It was a small faction really that caused our exile. Most of our ancestors who evaded that fate were not tricksters at all. They wanted to live simple lives, away from everyone. Many were what the Cowans called Gypsies.”
“Okay.” I understand the exaggeration part. I had no clue about the Gypsies thing. But I keep going back to a key point that makes her story farfetched. “But it’s been a thousand years. Why are Skin Walkers attacking the King and the Witan now?”
Conor answers. “There has always been some violence against Witches in certain areas. A Witch death here or there has gone unnoticed for centuries. Our brethren have not sought them out, but they have exacted revenge for past sins on those who happened to cross their paths. It is only now,” he pauses and looks at his sister, “that one of us is seeking war in an effort to reestablish our place in this realm.”
“Well, that’s stupid,” I say, making all eyes turn to me. I shrug. “Well, it is. Today’s Witches don’t even know what a Skin Walker is, let alone that they were once exiled. This isn’t war. It’s murder.”
“Why wait until we came?” Kegan asks. “How do we fit in this?”
“We have always paid close attention to the Witch community, mostly for self-preservation. The rumor of the Witch Fairy being alive and well has spread quite far,” Jadyn says. “When your grandmother left abruptly, my brother correctly assumed that you would be returning. If tales of your power are true, he felt he had to wait until he could kill you along with the Witches for his plan to work.”
I shake my head and mutter, “It is amazing how I jump to the top of everyone’s ‘To Kill’ list.” Doesn’t anyone have a ‘Maybe I’ll Like Her’ list? I’d like to be on top of one of those for a change. “How did you know my grandmother is an Angel?”
“As I said, we kept close tabs on the Witches. There were rumors. I was not one hundred percent sure until you confirmed it,” she says with a guilty little smile.
“Why did you keep this from us?” Kallen demands. “If you had come to us and explained the situation, a lot of violence could have been prevented.”
Conor snorts. “Yes, because Fairies have always been our allies. You would have killed us on the spot as your ancestors did ours.”
Anger slithers across Kallen’s face despite our earlier conversation where he defended the Witches and Fairies for committing genocide. At least, they tried to commit genocide. Obviously, they didn’t. “You do not know me; do not assume you know what I would do.”
Mmm, smell that testosterone in the air. There’s enough of it to send three or four boys through puberty. Ignoring them, I say to Jadyn, “Why didn’t you warn us about the iron?”
Her face pained, she says, “I didn’t know Andrew was going to do that. When I felt it in the air, I raced to the library but you and the Angel already had things under control.”
I’ll buy that. “Is your brother the leader of the ones who want war?” I ask. “If we stop him does that mean the Witches will be safe?”
Almost unperceptively, Jadyn nods her head. “It would go far.” Her eyes fill with tears. “Must you kill him?” she asks.
I’m taken aback. “Kill him? Why would I do that?”
Conor snorts again. “Come on, that’s what your kind does to mine.”
“My kind? I’m pretty sure you’ve never met my kind before,” I snap. That shuts him up.
Pulling the conversation back to where it should be, Kallen asks, “How do we find your brother?”
As if on cue, a distant scream has us scrambling for the door. Wrenching it open, we tear out into the hall and towards the sound.
Chapter 27
What we find is not as bad as I feared, though it has potential to be tragic. We find Glinda in her room, out on a balcony, desperately holding onto her husband’s hand. He’s on the wrong side of the balcony dangling.
“I’ll get him,” Kallen says, striding to the couple. With a little bit of magic and physical strength, he pulls the man up and back onto the balcony. Glinda is in her hu
sband’s arms in a heartbeat.
“What happened?” Alita asks.
“Someone pushed him while I was in the bathroom,” Glinda sobs. “I heard him shout and I rushed out here. I…I couldn’t pull him back over the railing.” Her husband begins murmuring comforting words in her ear as he holds her close.
I throw my hands up in the air. “This is ridiculous! I’ve had it.” I turn around and stomp out of the room.
Blood of the Exiled (Witch Fairy Book 10) Page 19
