Acting Up

by A. A. Albright

  I felt my pulse race at his mention of Dizzy. The bat had never been Will’s uncle’s familiar. Not by choice. Dizzy had been forcibly bonded with Harry Berry, which was why he got to live on after Harry’s murder was solved. I was the witch Dizzy chose, and if Will’s dad thought he could claim him like he was a piece of property, then I would fight that evil old warlock to the death. ‘The blurry person, Will,’ I said through a clenched jaw. ‘Fred must have told you about it. Why wouldn’t you report something so suspicious?’

  ‘Because Berrys sort things for themselves. It’s probably just some vamp my dad has tailing me.’

  Finn kept his expression even, but I could tell he was just as surprised as I was by that comment. ‘You think your father has people tailing you?’

  Will let out a huff of air and smirked at Finn. ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t grow up in a coven just as cut-throat as mine. Your own mother has disowned you, Finn, because you helped put your aunt in prison.’ He sat back and crossed his arms. ‘Look, I don’t want to have some snarky back and forth with you, Finn. And definitely not with you, Wanda. So can I suggest something?’

  Finn arched a brow. ‘You can suggest all you like. Doesn’t mean you’re going to get what you want.’

  ‘Fair enough. Here’s my suggestion. I have some things I want to say, about why the Blue was in my safe. But I want to say them to Wanda first.’ He held his hands up. ‘You can record our conversation, film us or whatever. But I’d like your assurance that, if it’s proved that I didn’t kill Felix and Yvonne, then the tape is destroyed.’

  Finn looked at me. ‘What do you think?’

  What did I think? I thought I was curious to know what Will could want to tell me alone. I also thought that Will’s lawyer might be about to blow a gasket.

  ‘I think we need to discuss this alone, Will,’ said Ranklin O’Toole. ‘You need to tell me what you want to say to this young woman.’

  ‘No,’ replied Will tonelessly. ‘This is between me and Wanda. If I go to trial on this, then I guess you’ll get to see the interview same as everyone else.’ He looked at Finn. ‘What do you say?’

  ‘It’s up to Wanda. But I’d be happy to make sure your conversation isn’t made public – unless, like you say, you go to trial.’

  ≈

  I sat across from Will, waiting for him to say something. He was saying something – at least technically – but he wasn’t saying it to me. He was mumbling something unintelligible and, as he did so, a spark of light came out of his right index finger and extended quickly, dashing around the room and encircling us in spirals of blue light.

  ‘What did you just do?’ I gasped, standing up.

  ‘Don’t worry, Wanda. I’d never hurt you. But it’s time for me to come clean with you. Finally. And I can’t do that if we’re being recorded.’

  ‘Finn’ll be in here in a second,’ I said. ‘If you’re trying to mess with the cameras, he’ll know.’

  ‘No.’ Will shook his head. ‘He won’t. He won’t know a thing. Right now he sees me and you having a conversation about whether I want tea or coffee, and I’m telling you that, actually, I’ll stick to water because I’ve heard that the coffee around here tastes like swamp monster excrement. After that we’ll move onto the topic of Blue, in which Finn will see me tell you that my father bought it to poison my mother last year, and I stole it from him and hid it. And that’s almost true. Almost.’

  I gasped again, because, well … what else was I going to do? What was wrong with these people? Why couldn’t they just play nice?

  A moment or two more of gasping and I got myself together. ‘Will, how do you have the power to make our cameras record something that’s not actually happening? You told me many times that you don’t have as much power as I do – but I certainly couldn’t do what you’re doing right now. Not without a lot of ingredients and a heap of prep work anyway. Also – and more important than any of that – you’re disempowered right now. You shouldn’t be able to do a Solas spell let alone … this.’

  He shook his head in a frustrated manner. ‘Yeah, well, I found a way to give myself a bit of a boost. That’s not important right now. What’s important is that you know the real reason I have the Blue.’ He scratched the back of his neck, looking more agitated by the second. ‘The blurry figure Fred told you about. We’ll start there. I really do think my dad’s having me tailed. He made me swear to marry Mandy. He’ll want to know I’m staying on track.’

  ‘What? Why would he care who you marry?’

  He barked out a laugh. ‘You’ve met my dad, Wanda. Do you really need to ask that? He hates you. He wants me to be with anyone but you. His top choice, though, is Mandy. She might be keeping the Parker name for the sake of her career, but she’s a Berry through and through. She’s …’ Will shuddered. ‘Well, she’s horrible. She’s cruel and selfish. She’s nasty verging on evil. She’s everything my dad wishes I was. Oh, and she’s also so talentless that watching her act makes me want to pull out the hairs on my head, one by one.’

  I felt my nose wrinkle. ‘She’s got a lot of fans for someone who’s so talentless, Will. But speaking of acting talent, you’ve certainly got that in spades yourself. The way you were kissing Mandy at the dance was pretty darned realistic.’

  A pained expression crossed his face. ‘Yeah, well, I’ll explain that in a minute. And by the way – she is talentless. She uses a special mask for her performances. It makes her seem likeable and loveable. Makes the audience go wild for her. Without it, they’d see her for what she is – and probably hate her for it, too.’

  ‘Mask?’ The vision in the flames had shown someone wearing a mask, and Fred had been sure that the blurry figure wore one, too. ‘Will, is there any chance that Mandy could be the one setting you up? Because that blurry figure Fred’s been seeing around your house? He said he saw a mask, too.’

  He shook his head. ‘It was a black and white mask Fred saw. He told me all about it. Like one of those tragedy and comedy things. Mandy’s isn’t one of those. It’s an exact match for her face, and you can’t even tell when she’s wearing it. It’s made by Guillermo Moriarty. He’s got a little place on Samhain Street. Anyway, Mandy’s mask isn’t important. Neither is her lack of talent. I’m trying to tell you something here, Wanda. I have that Blue because …’ He sucked in some air and slowly blew it out. ‘I was going to have my father assassinated.’

  I swallowed. ‘That’s … I mean … but Will, you can’t be telling me this! Buying Blue with the intention of killing someone is a crime. A serious one.’

  As I spoke, all of the stress fell away from his face and he gave me a sighing smile. ‘Oh, dear goddess, you’re perfect. You’re just … perfect.’

  Far be it for me to disagree with a man who thought I was perfect, but … really?

  While I struggled to process his latest sentence, he continued to talk. ‘I liked you before I ever met you because you did things your own way. You didn’t kowtow to the rest of the magical world. You went off and made your way in the human one. And when I actually met you.’ He shook his head in wonderment. ‘Your body. Your gorgeous face. Your honest, searching eyes. I could barely think straight the day I interviewed you.’

  I felt myself let out an impromptu laugh. He couldn’t think? I left that interview in Berrys’ Bottlers not even knowing what my job entailed.

  ‘I could see straight away that you saw things differently than I did,’ he went on. ‘But I could also see that I liked your way of seeing things. I’d been so afraid of my dad – of my whole coven – all my life. I was brainwashed. I took their beliefs and attitudes on as my own. But you … you opened my eyes. You were perfectly happy to live in an other enclave with a weredog, something my lot would have thrown me out of the coven for. You just went with what you thought was right. It took me a while to catch up with you on some things, Wanda. When you’ve grown up a Berry, it’s hard to start to think for yourself. But I knew if I ever wanted someone as good as you, I was go
ing to have to start.’

  I looked down at my hands. ‘Like I said a few minutes ago, Will – you’re a very good actor. And I’m not sure whether you’re acting right now. After me and my coven got your aunt sent down, you looked at me like I was dirt. You spoke to me like I was dirt, too. I dunno how the Berrys do things, but when I like someone I try to treat them with respect.’

  He bit his lip. ‘You’re right. And I’ll say sorry until the day I die for that. I want to get everything on the table here, Wanda. I was upset when I found out you were spying on me and Aunt Alice. But then I thought about it some more. And a bit more.’ He tilted his head back, looking at the ceiling. ‘Good goddess, I was such an idiot back then. I knew my dad was bad, but I don’t think I knew quite how bad. He caught me writing you a letter last summer. A love letter, actually. It was a little while after you had Alice sent down and we had that horrible conversation in the park, where I fired you.’

  He looked at me, his sea-green eyes filled with self-consciousness. ‘I was being all romantic in the letter, asking if you’d forgive me for being such a prat … blah blah blah. Anyway, my dad grabbed it off me, read it, and broke out laughing. He gave me an ultimatum. He said he wanted me to be with Mandy, but that if I was going to be an idiot and insist on being with you, then I had to make you part of the Berry fold, or I could forget about you forever.’

  He paused for a moment, looking far away. ‘There was something about the way he said it. It set my nerves on edge, y’know? I still didn’t want to believe he’d actually do anything to you, but I think I must have known. Deep down, anyway. Because otherwise, I would have sent you that letter instead of throwing it in the bin and continuing to push you away. When we first met, I was going to ask you to join the coven. But by that time … by that time I knew that I wanted to keep you as far away from the other Berrys as possible. My dad, especially. And then … and then we both found out what he was capable of, when we found all those people he’d kidnapped and murdered at the Wizard’s Graveyard.’

  I thought back to that day. Will’s father had almost killed me. He had drained my power, and murdered too many witches to count. It had been horrific. But Will had come through for me, as he had on so many other occasions since. He had tried to save me from his own father.

  That was why I was so surprised when, afterwards, he reported me to the former Minister for Magical Law for using magic against her orders.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘It’s written all over your perfect face. Wanda, while you were lying in hospital recovering, my father let me know just how far he was prepared to go to get out of Witchfield. He told me I had to do two things. I had to put you out of my head and start seeing Mandy. And I had to go to the Minister and make a deal. To trade what I knew about you using magic when you were banned, in return for her giving his sentence a second look. He told me that if I didn’t, he’d send the Dark Team to assassinate you.’

  I sat back, frowning. ‘That makes no sense. The Dark Team wouldn’t have killed me. They wanted me to marry Gabriel.’

  Will snorted. ‘Yeah, but my dad didn’t know that. He didn’t even know who the Dark Team were. No one did. I started to suspect Gabriel Godbody might be involved a while back. I looked into him, but I couldn’t find any proof.’

  ‘Wait, did you steal his property records from the Licensing, Records and Registry Department?’ I asked. During a case last winter, when the man who would never be my father-in-law was trying to buy up the house of a dead woman called Winnie Wywood, his records had been stolen. They had turned up again, but I’d always had the suspicion that the stolen Godbody records had nothing to do with the case. It seemed I might have been right.

  ‘Yeah.’ Will nodded. ‘But I put them back. I was on him for months, but I couldn’t find a connection between him and the Dark Team. Shows how much I knew.’

  He looked like he was annoyed with himself, but I couldn’t share that sentiment. He had suspected the right person. That was amazing in itself.

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on. ‘Maybe him and the Dark Team had no intention of ever actually going through with the contract, but they were charging my dad a lot of money to carry out that very deed. And as far as he believed, they were going to go through with it.’ He reached for my hand, but I pulled back. ‘Wanda, don’t be afraid of me. I’m not my dad. I’m nothing like him, or my aunt, or any of the other bad Berrys. Hell, why do you think I helped put Justine Plimpton in prison? I wanted to make sure she couldn’t finagle a deal to get my dad out early.’

  ‘Then why did you make that deal with her in the first place?’

  ‘I had to, so I could fool my dad into thinking I was on his side. I had to do a lot of things to fool him. I was keeping things on the long finger. I never wanted to marry Mandy. Or to get him out of Witchfield. Justine asked for a lot of cash in return for getting him early release, and I kept saying I had to find a way to cook the books before I could give her that amount of money. I fed her excuse after excuse. When I had the chance to help you put her away, I pounced on it.’

  I recalled a visit I had made to Witchfield. Will’s father had thrown a chair at Will in the visiting room. He had obviously been very unhappy about something. ‘How did you explain all of that to your dad? He must have known you helped me.’

  ‘I lied through my teeth,’ he replied with a wry grin. ‘Told him it was dumb bad luck that I was there at the same time as you found her lair. I said I had nothing to do with helping you escape with your dad. He didn’t believe me. I think someone went behind my back and told him that I was the one who paid off Justine’s private security guards that day. I was so scared. I thought for sure that he was going to order the Dark Team to hurry up and kill you.’ He brushed away a tear. ‘But then you went and achieved the impossible. You put the entire Dark Team behind the magical bars of Witchfield.’

  He gave me a bitter smile. ‘For the briefest while I thought it’d be okay. You could handle anything, even the Dark Team. There’d be nothing my dad could do to hurt you. So I went to him and I told him …’ He paused to sniff. ‘I told him it was over. He couldn’t control me anymore. I wasn’t marrying Mandy. I was taking the coven in a whole new direction. The Berrys were going to become the good guys.’

  I knew there was more. Otherwise, he wouldn’t look so upset. But this was clearly a difficult story for him to tell, and I wasn’t going to rush him. I refilled his water glass and waited for him to take a drink and calm down.

  ‘He laughed in my face. He told me that the Dark Team weren’t the only assassins he had access to. He told me that unless I went through with marrying Mandy, he was going … he was going to have my mother killed. My mother, Wanda. His wife. No, it wasn’t that bottle of Blue from my safe that he was going to use. But it’s absolutely true that he was going to kill her. It shouldn’t have surprised me, I guess. We both saw what little regard he has for anyone but himself. I mean, he murdered Uncle Harry.’ He shook his head. ‘Anyway, that was when I decided I was going to have to take things into my own hands. I got the Blue. And …’ He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘And you know what I was going to do with it. I was going to kill him the next time I visited him. But please, Wanda, don’t think I’m as big a monster as he was. I was only going to kill him to protect you and my mam.’

  ‘Will!’ I cried, shaking my head. ‘I’ve already told you that you can’t be telling me these kinds of details, you idiot. I’m a Wayfarer. I’m not really into the whole murder my problems away method.’

  He gave me a teary, head-shaking smile. ‘There you go again. You’re incorruptible, aren’t you? Absolutely and utterly good, right down to the bone. I mean it when I say I want to be like you, Wanda. I want to be with you, and to just soak in every bit of you for the rest of my life. But … he keeps finding more and more ways to make it impossible.’

  He stood up and paced the room. ‘And you don’t need to worry about me murdering anyone. Not now, anyway. My stupid warlock father wa
s always one step ahead of me. He’s had a spell put on himself, Wanda. Dark magic, linking his life to my mother’s.’ He looked me in the eye. ‘And to yours. The second he dies, so do the two of you.’

  The room went utterly silent, which felt all kinds of wrong. Shouldn’t there be some kind of dramatic music for news like that? Maybe something full of bass and menace?

  ‘But … that’s impossible,’ I said eventually. ‘He’s in Witchfield.’

  Will balled his fists, looking hopeless. ‘It’s not impossible, Wanda. It’s really not. You think criminals can’t still be criminals just because they’re behind bars?’

  ‘So what are you saying? Another prisoner performed this spell? Or someone on the outside?’

  ‘I don’t know who he used, but I’m trying to find out so I can have the spell broken. Until then, I’m under his thumb, Wanda. I have to do everything he wants. Including marrying Mandy.’

  He moved right in front of me, kneeling on the floor. This time, when he took my hands in his, I didn’t pull away. ‘I have never had a kiss like the one we had at Winter Solstice. I’ve known you over a year now, Wanda, and it feels like I want you more by the day. When you were with that Godbody creep it drove me crazy. I wanted to punch his lights out. And acting like I’m still the same kind of elitist creep my dad is? That’s not me, Wanda. But I have to pretend. I have to. If I don’t, you and my mother both die.’

  As I looked into his eyes, I knew he was telling the truth. What I didn’t understand was … why now? So I asked him. ‘Will … why are you telling me this now, after all this time?’

  ‘Because if you don’t figure out who’s trying to kill Mandy, my dad is going to assume I’m the one behind it. And if he thinks that, then he’ll find some way to hurt you. Whoever’s following me, whoever that was that Fred saw, they must be another assassin. He’s sending me a warning. Letting me know he can get to me – and get to you and my mam – even from behind bars.’