Death's Ethereal Enemy

by Ruby Loren

  “I’m not explaining something so trivial to you. I thought you were supposed to be better than us all.” Cadence’s mouth wouldn’t even deign to move into a smirk, so it was written in her eyes instead.

  January couldn’t help wondering if she and her brother shared the same dreadful core, but he’d just got better at hiding it.

  “I suppose it’s because you’re reflecting light back at me rather than being present, but on a different plane of existence,” January surmised aloud. “Lucky me that you’re still clumsy.”

  She glanced at the unit when she said it and saw a smudge of pink magic. Just as I thought, her mind whispered, but she kept her expression blank.

  “What did you and Emerson chat about when he asked you to do some sneaking around?” January asked, sensing an opportunity.

  “That is none of your concern,” Cadence said, batting the question away like an unruly fly.

  January nodded, as though she was sorry for making the mistake of asking. “Did he mention anything about Adelaide?”

  She looked over in time to see surprise and confusion written on Cadence’s normally blank face for a split second. Ha! He had decided to keep that knowledge under his hat.

  Now it would be January’s move to make, if she chose to make it.

  “What about her? I suppose someone told you who she was. If you think we’re going to tell you how she died, so you can get rid of us in the same way, you’re sorely mistaken.”

  “Interesting idea,” January acknowledged, wondering if repeating Adelaide’s unintentional actions could be a way to rid herself of these first vampires.

  “I’m not here to give you ideas that will result in your ending. Although, it would save me the babysitting duty.”

  January laughed, which made Cadence look even more affronted. “You’d get on really well with my sister,” she told the first vampire.

  Cadence took a handful of dust from her pocket. January recognised it as the same spell Emerson had used to transport himself places.

  “Wait!” she said, making a snap decision. “What if I told you Adelaide’s still alive?”

  Cadence kept her fist tightly shut. “I’d say you were either lying, or crazy. Maybe both,” she smiled and lifted her hand again.

  “She has dark blonde hair and amber coloured eyes. She looks about nineteen, or so. How else would I know that?”

  Cadence’s hand froze again. “Perhaps Emerson told you,” she said, but sounded less certain.

  “Will Warwick let Leah go if he finds out Adelaide’s still around?” January asked, hoping that, at the very least, this information might have bought freedom for her friend.

  “Leah is Warwick’s one and only. It’s super rare what they have, but Leah doesn’t…” She shook her head, like she couldn’t believe she was saying so much.

  “But Warwick doesn’t let anyone talk about Adelaide,” January said and then regretted it. Now she was the one who’d said too much.

  “That was supposed to be confidential when I told you that.” Leah stepped through the doorway, comically clutching a piece of cake in her hand. Surprisingly, January had a moment of regret that the slice had been wasted on a vampire instead of the crowd out front, who were clamouring for more cake while she was stuck discussing a past so ancient, it pre-dated history.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” Cadence said, sounding bored.

  “That’s because I wanted you to find me here,” Leah said right back.

  January saved her quizzical look for later. Either Leah was bluffing to get one over the ancient vampire, or this was yet another game of mind-chess she’d stumbled into.

  “Ever since I joined you, I’ve been told Adelaide’s a forbidden topic because of what was supposed to have been between her and Warwick, but that’s not the truth, is it?” Leah said.

  January tried to look like she had half a clue what she was talking about.

  “You and your brother aren’t the only ones who are good at sneaking around. Warwick’s not the one who was obsessed with Adelaide. It was Emerson,” Leah finished, looking triumphant.

  “Of course not,” Cadence said, but January saw her uncertainty. She wasn’t sure if Leah was bluffing.

  All the same, she’d just given everything away.

  “Was it Emerson she nearly killed when she tried to take him through a thin place?” January jumped in, feeling both amazed and horrified.

  “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Cadence flung the powder onto the floor. The next second, she was gone, and January had another scorch mark to try and cover up.

  “What just happened?” January said to Leah, struggling to process it.

  “Everything just changed,” Leah said, stepping forwards and grabbing her arm. “Come on, we’ve got to move. Cadence can tell him where you are, and we need some breathing space. If we move, it will at least take him some time to follow.”

  “You think he’s going to come for us?” January asked, still trying to figure everything out.

  Leah hesitated. “I’m not sure. I’m not sure what Cadence thinks we know, or what she’s going to tell him.” She ran a hand through her shoulder-length hair. January found she missed the pixie cut. Long hair just wasn’t Leah.

  “Okay, let’s go,” January said. She yelled to the servers that she was popping out, and for them to try to fend off the customers for a while. Hopefully, she could make it up to her poor staff later.

  But right now, the fate of the world could well be at stake. And that was probably one of the only things that trumped cake.

  “You took me to the play area. How thoughtful,” Leah said, when they sat down on the bench overlooking the climbing frame. The larger, newer park at the other end of Hailfield had stolen the majority of the clientele, who’d once frequented the area, which made it the perfect incognito meeting place.

  “So, what was that? Some huge bluff?” January said, knowing time was short.

  “No, it was carefully calculated. Although, you sort of let the cat out of the bag a bit early on by springing the whole Adelaide revelation on her, but I made it work.”

  “You planned this?” January tried to clarify.

  “Yes. It’s a plan to get The Clan to destabilise from the inside and hopefully take each other out, which saves us a lot of bother. At the very least, we’re hoping it might make them wobbly.”

  “We?” January said, getting more confused by the second.

  “Me, Simon, and some wealthy backers who want a large slice of the pie, when its time for the vultures to swoop in.” Leah smiled a grim smile. “One tyrannical ruler falls, another ten rise to take their place.”

  “Great,” January said, managing to convey just how enthusiastic she felt about that.

  Leah flicked her gaze heavenwards. “That’s what they’re supposed to think. Really, we’ll wipe the board clean and then decide.” She looked thoughtfully at January for a moment or two too long.

  “What you just said about Warwick not being the one Adelaide nearly killed, or was even interested in - is that true?” January asked, still not sure why it really made a difference.

  “According to Cadence’s awful poker face, yes,” Leah said, looking mightily pleased with herself.

  “Okay, great… Emerson had a thing for the last enchanter. It explains why he’s been friendly with me, too. Well, when he’s not trying to kill me, that is,” January confessed. “He says it’s in good fun. I must bring back happy memories. Or not so happy memories,” she added, thinking of Adelaide trying to pull him across worlds. “Was Adelaide intentionally trying to murder Emerson when she did that?”

  “I’m not sure, but you’ve met the guy…”

  “…it’s probably likely,” January finished.

  Leah turned her attention back to the climbing frame and looked beyond it at the fields of maize, which were thriving in the summer weather. “What all this means is that we’ve been lied to for years. I’ve been lied to since I beca
me the first made. It took me millennia to realise I was made the day after Adelaide died. Or, was supposed to have died. It was all hush hush because of Warwick. He even made it appear that way. All along it’s been Emerson, and you were what it took to finally get the truth.”

  “Why does Emerson’s love life matter so much?”

  “Emerson’s used Warwick as a puppet for more than just a love life cover up. Warwick is his puppet for everything, and Emerson is the one pulling all the strings,” Leah explained.

  The penny finally dropped for January. “He’s in charge, and everyone is under his control,” she said, realising that something was very twisted. The Clan wasn’t a democratic group with a leader who seemed to have the mutual respect of the others. Emerson moved all of the pieces.

  “How did you find out?” January asked, still confused as to why this revelation had come about. Sure, Cadence’s slip of the tongue had been interesting, but Leah had seemed to already know the truth.

  Leah’s eyes glittered. “It’s because of the books that are kept in the research centre. That whole thing about Warwick storming in and Simon finding out they kept all the information there was complete fabrication. I knew about the room because I once tried to get in there myself. I nearly died doing it. When Warwick found me, he told me that he’s the only one able to get into the room. I didn’t think anything more about it… until Simon started working there. I managed to contact him to see if he could figure out a way into the room. I told him what had happened to me, and after he was done telling me it was crazy, he agreed to at least watch the damn door. Guess what he saw?” Leah said.

  “Emerson going into the room?” January ventured, still unimpressed.

  “Actually, no. He never saw anyone go into that room at all while he was working there. What was most interesting, was when his buddy Delimon found out some juicy info. Emerson was the one who made him disappear for good. Emerson’s also the only one who seems to visit the facility. Simon had seen him before he turned up at Tor’s house.” Leah paused for effect. “Does that sound like Warwick’s in control to you?”

  January shrugged.

  Leah nodded. “That’s actually what we thought, too. It was interesting that Warwick himself never turned up to check on what was happening in the research facility, but who knows? Perhaps Emerson was just doing his dirty work, and things had changed. We needed proof that Emerson was the one in control.”

  January’s creased forehead flattened out as several things slotted into place. “You used me!”

  “We knew you’d be okay. You’re an enchanter! You have powers we can only dream of,” Leah said, consolingly.

  “You don’t know that. I don’t know what I’m doing, and maybe whatever’s around that room could be the exception to the rule. It could have been the end. At the very least, I might have been stuck there forever, separated from my body,” January said, furious that she’d been set up. She should have known better than to expect Simon to be helping her out of the goodness of his heart.

  “If Warwick really was in control of that room, he’d have spelled it so that someone like Emerson couldn’t weasel their way in. However, if Emerson was the one with power over the room, and potentially a lot of other things…”

  “I’d be able to get in,” January concluded, unhappy to say the least.

  “And you did get in and out safely. Gregory told us,” Leah said.

  “Gregory was in on using me?” January exploded, unable to believe the scheming that had gone on without her knowledge.

  “It had to look natural and like your own decision. Emerson knows you know Simon. He’d probably figured out that Simon would have learned of the existence of the room of knowledge. Like a good little sneak, he’d pass that information onto you. Emerson even turned up at the house when Simon was there, as if to remind him to tell you.”

  Leah shook her head. “If I hadn’t tried to break in of my own accord all those years ago, and if Emerson had been the one who’d found me, rather than Warwick, things might have been very different. The bottom line is, Emerson was the one who was expecting you to try to break into that room - not Warwick. When you came back without a scratch on you, I was more convinced than ever that Warwick’s leadership is a sham.”

  “It sounds shaky,” January said.

  “Yeah, I know. That’s why I had to make it obvious that I was coming to visit you today to tell you something really important. Gregory said you finally took my advice and made the charm. That’s a really tough piece of magic, by the way. Well done.”

  January threw her another disbelieving look.

  “Sorry… again,” Leah said, not looking sorry at all. “Time is of the essence and all that.” She smiled. “For once, it might actually be true. For so long, things have been just the same as they've always been, and then you come along and change it in what feels like a heartbeat.”

  “Nice of Gregory to step in and stop that scheming werewolf from trying to rip my face off,” January said, ignoring Leah’s attempts to make her see ‘the bigger picture’. “If he was watching, he could have helped.”

  “He never saw the wolf until you threw him out of the side of the house.” Leah shrugged. “He’s a vampire. He probably didn’t want to get his hands dirty.”

  January shook her head. Despite manipulating her into following a predestined path, she thought Gregory might just be telling the truth about the werewolf. The spells he'd been wrapped in could have been more than just protection. The question was, whose spells were they?

  “What colour is Warwick’s magic? When he just does an ordinary spell?” January asked, wanting to confirm it.

  “Silver. He hardly ever does normal spells. It’s all high magick, symbols, and memory manipulation.” Leah wriggled her fingers in the air.

  “What about Emerson?” she asked.

  Leah tilted her head at her. “I’ve never seen him do anything you’d class as actual magic. Max doesn’t either. Cadence is the only other. Her magic is emerald green.”

  January thought about that. “Does the colour of magic ever run in families?” she asked, wondering if Cadence was the one who’d killed her parents, or if…

  “That depends on a lot of things,” Leah said, unhelpfully.

  January bit her lip. Even if Emerson was still managing to avoid the dirty work, she had a suspect that didn’t match Emerson’s description of what had happened to her parents. Sure, it could have been Cadence who had done it, but why lie about that? He could have claimed she’d done it at Warwick’s behest.

  She thought it far more likely that Emerson had been the one to kill them.

  Warwick wasn’t fascinated with where enchanters came from and what made them exist. But Emerson was.

  “What happens now?” January said, wondering if Emerson was about to rain fire down on them, now that they knew his secret.

  “We’re only reasonably sure we’re correct, right?” Leah said.

  January nodded.

  “And that’s when we’ve put lots of ducks in a row that Emerson doesn’t even know we possess. If Cadence confesses all to him, which she may, or may not, all he’s going to think we know is that he was the one who had the hots for Adelaide.” She shrugged. “Big deal, right? He’ll probably come up with a logical reason, like Warwick wanting to take credit because he was the one in a relationship with her, but Adelaide actually had a thing for Emerson. Pretty embarrassing, right?”

  “You think we’re going to get away with this?” January said and then shook her head. “How does this even change anything? So, Warwick’s not the one pushing everyone into place. What does it change?”

  Leah smiled. “Haven’t you noticed how Warwick stays removed from everything? He’s locked away in the compound, safe and sound, while his supposed underling gets to go out and have all of the fun. If Emerson gets into trouble, who cares? He’s not important to The Clan. He’s just their little spy.” Leah raised her eyebrows. “That’s what he wants you to think
.”

  Leah inched along the seat, so she was closer to January than she would have usually liked the vampire-witch to be. “We can use this to our advantage.”

  “What about Adelaide?” January asked, thinking that Leah was missing a pretty key player on the board.

  Leah shrugged. “There’s a reason she ducked out so early on. She doesn’t want to be a part of this.”

  “I think she might have tried to kill Emerson,” January said, thoughtfully.

  “Probably,” Leah said. “But she hasn’t tried again.”

  January frowned, wondering if that was telling. Had dragging Emerson into the overlapping world been an intentional attempt to get rid of him? Wouldn’t a simpler way have been to thrust a good old stake through the heart? The only reason January had never tried that method was because she knew she wouldn’t even get close, and what would it have changed, anyway? She’d never got to see Warwick, the real power behind The Clan…

  “I guess it does change some things,” she admitted, thinking the world looked a little brighter, now that there was a target she had contact with on a regular basis. He even claimed to want to be her friend. Whilst he was working on getting her to let her defences down, what if she worked her way inside his?

  “Come on,” Leah said, grabbing her hand. “We’re having our own clan meeting.”

  January pulled a face.

  “Not a cool comparison? Fine. We’re meeting Simon at his house to let him know how it went. We’d better move, before one of the others comes to find me,” Leah said.

  “We’re the first ones here,” January said to Leah when they’d arrived on the doorstep, and she’d tried the door.

  “Are we breaking in?” Leah said, with a little smile.

  January rolled her eyes. “Enjoying our taste of freedom, are we? Simon will probably be here in a second. I’d rather he didn’t actually catch me in the act.”

  A loud thump came from within the house.

  Followed by the sound of someone dying, noisily.

  “On second thoughts…” January said, smashing the glass in the door for the second time and opening it from the inside.