“What was so exceptional about this case?” asked Dan Alexander, and he, at least, looked genuinely interested in my answer.
“I’ll tell you what.” Wendy strode into the room, Caleb and Granny only a step behind her. She came and stood at my side. “Cillian Wick is a vampire.”
A few people laughed—although fewer than I would have thought—while I gave Wendy a look that suggested she wasn’t helping. “Not in the traditional sense,” I said. “He’s not interested in our blood. He’s interested in our power.”
Dan’s mouth had dropped open at the word vampire. Apparently Marjory hadn’t shared any of the basics about feeders with the good citizens of Bristol. “Our power?” he asked.
Wendy quickly scanned the room. “Everyone here is a believer. Most of you are witches yourselves, or come from a long line of them, anyway. You know as well as I do that there is an extraordinary amount of magical energy here. Cillian Wick wants to steal that energy from us.”
This time the murmurs were a little more friendly, people muttering that they’d like to see him try, or wondering how he proposed to do such a thing, but not in a way that suggested they didn’t believe Wendy. They were mistrustful of me; they always had been, and my long absence from Bristol hadn’t helped. But Wendy was another story. They knew her, and many of them liked her. Granny and Caleb, too, were highly respected members of the community. Their presence beside me lent me a kind of credibility that the support of outsiders like Lance and Agatha and Arabella could not.
But then Marjory addressed the crowd again. “Yes, there is an extraordinary amount of magical energy here. Bristol was founded on it. And we’d like to keep it that way, wouldn’t we?”
Nods of assent, although many were frowning at the same time. They didn’t know what she was getting at. I couldn’t say I did, either.
“We once had a patron,” Marjory said. “A powerful one.”
“We had a devil, you mean,” Granny interjected.
Marjory sniffed her dismissal. “A colorful term to feed the local legends. But even you cannot deny that he was not, in actuality, a creature from hell, can you?”
Without waiting for an answer, she turned back to her audience. “Call him what you will, but the fact is that our town flourished under his patronage. Under his power. And now that we’ve lost him, do you really feel that this girl is a suitable replacement?”
A stage whisper came from somewhere to my left. “His bastard daughter? Hardly.” The crowd seemed to snicker as one. For a moment, it was like being a girl again. I felt just as helpless. Just as ashamed. Just as much like I wanted to run into the woods and never come back.
Marjory gave them a tight smile. “I think we ought to interview a few other candidates for the position, don’t you?”
There was a general round of chuckles and affirmations.
But Granny laughed the loudest. “You can’t mean to say you want to invite the likes of Cillian Wick into this town to be our patron?” She cackled again. “Meet the new devil, same as the old devil.”
“But he won’t be the same,” I said. “He’ll be worse. For the town, anyway. You won’t prosper under this devil, I assure you.”
“We would like to hear him out,” said Marjory. “That’s all. Unless you have a reason to be afraid of what choice we would make, if we had all the information?”
“All the information?” Wendy laughed. “You have no idea.” Then she turned to me, clearly encouraging me to explain it all.
All eyes were on me, expectant.
I looked from Wendy to Arabella, but Arabella’s face was impassive. It would be up to me to decide whether to betray the Blackwood family secrets.
No.
At least, not all the secrets, not the ones that really needed to be protected. I wasn’t prepared to discuss the seeds, or where they were, or any of the particulars of the sanctuary, with so many people I couldn’t trust. And even if I wanted to tell them the details, what would I say? That I was guarding a handful of magic acorns so Cillian Wick couldn’t plant an evil forest? The truth was too crazy to believe.
But they still had a right to know what was coming for them.
“The facts are simple,” I said. “Wick wants a new deal for Bristol, that much is true. And that deal is for him and his family to feed off you all, sapping the magic and the energy right out of you. He will lie and cheat and say whatever is necessary to get you to let him in. And once you do, it will be too late.”
“And we’re meant to take your word for this?” Marjory asked.
“No,” I said. “I agree that you have a right to hear both sides of the story, and decide for yourselves who to believe.”
“Then you’ll lift the spell?” Marjory’s tone made it obvious that she thought I was bluffing.
Which, of course, I was. It was up to all of them, not me, to open Bristol’s gates to Cillian Wick. This very gathering might well have flung those gates wide already.
For the moment, my goal was to make sure they didn’t know that. And to buy myself some time to protect them from themselves.
I smiled, not at Marjory, but at Dan, at Tricia Landry, at the handful of others who seemed most sympathetic to me. “As you can imagine, closing the borders of the town against a particular bloodline was a complicated piece of magic.”
Several people smiled back. A few leaned forward, hoping I would say how I’d done it.
“Magic like that can’t be undone in an instant,” I went on. “And while you all came here prepared, you caught me unawares today. So what I propose is that you give me some time. Time to lift the spell, but also time to prepare my case, to present you with evidence that I’m telling you the truth.”
“How much time?” Dan asked.
I tried to look adorably flustered. The flustered part, at least, was easy. “I’m not sure. Like I said, you’ve caught me completely off guard here. Give me a chance to process all of this. And to book a proper meeting for us next time. I know a lot of you won’t miss an opportunity for some free food from Colonel Phearson’s.”
More smiles.
“I’ll get back to you with details, including a proposed date and time for us to get together again,” I said. “If you don’t hear from me, you can come back with your pitchforks then.”
A wave of quiet laughter, and I knew I had them.
Marjory argued, of course, as did a few of her friends. But when it became clear that this was the only offer on the table, the others relented.
After all, they didn’t have much choice. They could complain all they liked, but as far as they knew, I held most of the cards.
The meeting ended, the crowd dispersed, and I let out a breath that I’d been holding for what felt like hours. Without a word passing between us, Wendy, Caleb, Granny, and Arabella all followed me up a back staircase to my suite.
As soon as the door was closed behind us, I turned to Granny. “A group of townsfolk refusing my protection, that’s what you said, right? That’s all it takes for Cillian Wick to be able to walk right in here and plant a couple of seeds?”
She nodded.
“Well, that sure felt like a group of townsfolk refusing my protection, didn’t it?”
Nobody argued. We couldn’t know for sure, not unless Wick himself tested it, but it was possible—even likely—that Bristol had just broken its part of the sanctuary. The town was vulnerable to sapwoods and feeders alike.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to need you all to excuse me. I’ll call all of you later.”
“What are you going to do?” Arabella asked.
“A shot of tequila. Then I’m going to call Phineas and Lydia and beg them to help us one more time. We need to get those seeds, and we need to get them now.”
“No.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You have completely lost your mind.”
Lydia, Phineas, and Arabella sat around my table in identical contrary postures—arms crossed, shoulders stiff—the morning
after the impromptu town meeting in the Dogwood room. Lydia and Phineas had gotten up at dawn to drive out to the hotel, which may not have put them in the most receptive of moods.
Wendy, Caleb, and Granny were not there, not for lack of interest, but because I’d given them a different mission. They were to handle town politics, to the best of their ability, by subtly sending the message that I was right and the Garden Club was evil. Those who were already firmly in Marjory’s pocket would never be swayed, but Bristol had plenty of good witches too, and the Thaggards were well-liked among that crowd.
In the meanwhile, my job was to convince the others—particularly Phineas—of my plan.
As usual (especially when Lydia was involved), we had excessive quantities of food and coffee spread before us, and on every available surface in the kitchenette. But I couldn’t eat. Nothing would get past the hole in my chest. Cooper’s absence at a meeting where we were planning the best strategy to retrieve the sapwood seeds was almost as pronounced as it was when I was alone and missing him in more intimate ways.
“Why not?” I asked my naysayers. “The curse is broken. I’m stronger than I’ve been in months. I’m up to it.”
“For starters,” said Phineas, “we don’t even know what traveling my way—”
“Our way,” I corrected.
“—the phantasm way will do to you.”
“You said yourself that you didn’t think the problem last time was the traveling. I was cursed, I was soulsick—”
“You’ll still be soulsick when you leave town, and that seems like it gets worse every time,” Lydia pointed out.
“All the more reason to get in and out as fast as possible.” I looked at her rather than her husband. So far, she’d been the most agreeable of any of them. “Look, I think you know I don’t want to put Phineas in any more danger. I wouldn’t ask if I thought there was any other way. But we need speed, and we need surprise. If I could learn to teleport and go without him, I would. But we don’t have the time it would take for him to try to teach me.”
Lydia watched me for a few seconds, then gave me a small smile. “You’re mistaken in my concern. Yes, it’s dangerous, but Phineas has been in tighter spots than this. And okay, there was a bit of a fuck up last time—”
“I did not fuck up,” Phineas protested.
“But for the most part, he can take care of himself. Like you’ve been saying, teleportation is almost impossible to defend against with normal security measures. He can get away when things go wrong, as long as…” She drifted off, clearing her throat.
“As long as he doesn’t have someone else to worry about,” Arabella supplied. “He could have teleported away at any second last time, if he hadn’t been trying to get back to Cooper.” She looked at me. “And he would have someone else to worry about this time, too.”
I kept my eyes on Lydia, ignoring Arabella for the moment. One objection at a time. “So if your concern isn’t for Phineas, what is it?”
“I care about protecting Bristol,” said Lydia. “And, you know, the rest of the South, the continent, the planet. It’s not like the feeders don’t have a history of destroying worlds, right? So I’m down with the mission. But I need your word that this is really the mission.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning this is really about the seeds, and only the seeds. Meaning it’s not an excuse to go look for Cooper.” She saw me flinch and shifted in her seat, but her face was resolute. “Bottom line, I’m comfortable with Phineas putting himself in a certain amount of danger. But only for the right reasons. Not to chase a ghost. ”
I swallowed. “It’s not an excuse. This is about the seeds.”
And I meant it. I needed those seeds, I needed them quickly, and I meant to get them. That was the mission. For the moment, anyway.
“Okay then,” Lydia said, as though that settled the matter. “I will support this—at least the parts I haven’t already told you are stupid—on one condition. If shit comes in contact with fan, you get your asses outside and you travel away. Immediately. Whether you’ve got the seeds or not.”
Phineas laughed, sounding more exasperated than amused. “Hello? I’m right here. Why are you talking about me like my services are just something my wife can bargain for?”
Lydia turned to him. “I know you’re worried about traveling with her, but it’s not like traveling with a human. It’ll be safe for her.”
“You don’t know that. She got sick last time.”
“Because, as she just pointed out, she had all that other crap going on. She’s got the potential, you know she does. You said yourself you felt it. Bring some tea in a thermos, and let her take the risk, if she’s prepared to.”
“Why can’t you just tell me what you think I need to know, whatever Cooper told you, and I’ll go myself?” Phineas asked me.
“No,” we all said at once.
He looked around, offended. “You know, I am a highly trained—”
“You’re a highly trained a lot of things,” Lydia agreed. “But a witch is not one of them. Sorry, but you know magic isn’t your thing, and you need magic skills to get past those puzzles of theirs.” She looked at me, as if for confirmation. “Or so I’ve heard.”
I nodded. “That’s exactly it.”
“So, go over it again,” said Lydia. “In detail this time. We’ll save our constructive criticism for afterward.” She tapped a few keys on her phone. “I want to make a list.”
“A list?” I asked. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to have this in writing.”
“I think it’s unlikely that Marjory Smith will mug me for my phone.”
“She has to write it down,” Phineas said. “It’s a compulsion. She’s obsessed with bullet points.”
Lydia scowled at him. “I thought I made it clear that we were going to save our criticism for the end.”
“I thought that was just criticism of Verity. You’re fair game any time.”
“Okay,” I said, and immediately hoped they didn’t notice how harsh the word had come out. I couldn’t stand their cute little banter, not with Cooper gone. “I will arrange a meeting with Cillian Wick to exchange the remains. That will get him off the property and serve as a distraction.”
Lydia’s thumbs flew across her keypad. Without looking up she said, “But once he figures out it was a trick, he’ll close that door forever, don’t you think? You’re giving up any hope of bringing Cooper’s body home.”
I didn’t want to argue about Cooper, or about whether I would believe he was dead even if presented with some kind of remains. Time was short, and I needed them on my side. Instead I said, “If you were to ask Cooper which he’d rather have, a decent burial, or all the sapwood seeds safely in the Mount Phearson vault, I’m pretty sure there wouldn’t be much contest.”
Arabella gave me a sad smile.
“So, we’ll arrange to get Cillian out of there,” I went on. “And maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll take some of his goons or the other residents of his compound with him.”
“That will still leave plenty of security around,” Arabella said. “He’s not going to leave the place undefended, now that he knows the Blackwoods have the nerve to call on him at home.”
I nodded. “Which is why we need to teleport past all that. To Wick’s private entrance, which we know doesn’t have a camera.”
“But which does have a lock,” said Phineas. “And he’ll have changed the code by now.”
“Yes, but the last code was Harry’s birthday. Arabella got me the birthdates of his other kids. I’m going to try those.”
“And if you get it wrong, and it sets off an alarm?” Phineas asked.
“That is the beauty of this plan.” I gestured at Lydia. “We do exactly what your wife said: teleport away the second something goes wrong.”
“As long as you’re outside, or can get outside,” said Lydia.
“Exactly,” I said. “That right there is why Phineas won’t be going inside
at all.”
Lydia pointed at me. “And there’s the stupid part.”
I crossed my arms, running out of patience. “What happened to saving your criticism for the end?”
“I can’t help it.”
“Clearly none of you can.”
“Be that as it may,” said Lydia, “splitting up is a mistake.”
“I don’t want to split up,” I said. “I want him to leave entirely. Go home, go to The Witch’s Brew for a coffee break, go to Tahiti if he wants. Then wait for my signal, and come back for me when I have the seeds.”
“There is no possible way I’m letting you go in there alone,” said Phineas.
“Listen, if you’d stop acting like my overprotective big brother for five minutes, you’d see it’s the best way. I told you about the puzzle in the basement. We couldn’t see Cooper, when he was trapped inside it. There was no sign at all that he was there.”
“So?”
“So, you can bet there will be a puzzle protecting the seeds. The best way for me to stay hidden is to be inside it. And to not have anyone standing around in the hall waiting for me.”
“And what if this puzzle has some kind of magical alarm?” Arabella asked. “What if Wick gets some kind of alert that someone’s inside it?”
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” I said. “I don’t think he can tell when someone walks into his enchanted room any more than I can tell when someone walks into my enchanted hotel.”
“What makes you say that?” asked Arabella.
“Because otherwise there would be no need to put the more traditional kind of alarm on the door.”
They all looked at me blankly, not that I could blame them.
“Cooper told me what happened the day we tried to rescue Serena,” I said. “He said he missed a sensor and set off an alarm when he opened a closet door.”
Witch Bound (Devilborn Book 3) Page 17
