by K. J. Emrick
He wasn’t convinced. “Yes. You were.”
Well. “Yes. I suppose I was, yes. You were hiding something, Mac, and I wanted to know what it was.”
“People aren’t, entitled to, their secrets?”
One of his eyebrows popped up, framing the question for her. He was right. If anyone should be sensitive to people keeping secrets, it would be the Kilorian sisters. The witches of Shadow Lake.
“That may be true, Mac.” She folded her hands at her waist, eyeing him directly. “But you already know my secret. You’re still hiding yours.”
He nodded to that, a hitching up and down motion that ended with a frown. “I take it, since you’re here, you still think, I had something to do, with Seth’s murder.”
“It wasn’t Eleanor,” Addie said frankly. “We’ve eliminated her. As far as we know Seth didn’t have a lot of enemies. Right now, our suspicions are being divided between you, and Cavallo Raithmore.”
With a rumbling sort of laugh, he blew out a breath between his lips. “I never expected, to be in the same, company as, Cavallo Raithmore. Well. You and I, Addie Kilorian, have been friends, for a very, long time. Haven’t we?”
“That’s why I’m talking to you instead of accusing you of anything, Mac. Convince me you’re innocent. You were supposed to be at the debate, and you weren’t. You were supposed to help Maria set it up, and you didn’t. So explain to me where you were, and convince me you weren’t at Seth Hunter’s house poisoning him.”
“I shouldn’t, have to, convince you.” He sounded sad. Almost disappointed.
Addie wanted to leave it at that, because she and Mac really were friends, but she knew she couldn’t back down just because she had a history with Mac. “This is about a murder, Mac. I’m afraid you really do have to convince me.”
She waited, the moment stretching between them, until Mac blinked.
“I couldn’t get,” he said, even more slowly than usual, “to the, debate on, time. I had to, take care, of something.”
“What?”
His whole body seemed to heave, like it was rippling from the inside out. Then his hands came up, one at a time, and his fingers reached for his buttons. They fumbled them undone again, until he could shrug his right arm out of the sleeve and let his shirt dangle from the opposite shoulder. He turned to show her his right side. It was gnarled, and bulky with muscle that didn’t seem to quite line up like it should, but in all other respects it looked normal.
From the table beside the couch he picked up a washcloth. Very carefully, he began wiping at his side with the cloth. Before long, the color began to wipe away.
Makeup. Addie realized it was makeup that she had seen him applying in the bathroom. It was perfectly matched to his skin tone but now that she knew it was there she could just see the irregular edges of it. He kept wiping, until he had most of it removed.
Underneath was a patch of blackened, withered flesh. It looked like decay. Like his body was rotting away.
“Curse my Irish eyes,” she whispered. Her gaze snapped up and found his. “You’re…”
He dropped the rag onto the table again. “I’m dead. Yes.”
Now Addie did sit down. Or rather, she dropped down hard into the loveseat, and the puffy cushions whumped under her. She was a witch, and every witch worth her salt had come face to face with dead people before. Zombies. Revenants. The odd vampire or two. She’d seen a few in her time.
Never, ever, anything like this.
“How?” she asked him, unable to keep from staring at the area of rot on his side. Pieces of him flaked off under his fingertips. “How is this possible? Mac, what happened to you?”
“That is, a long story.” He sort of chuckled. “Not one that, I’m proud of, either.”
“Mac…”
“No, I’m going to, tell you. All of it. Just bear, with me.”
He struggled into his shirt again, covering up the decaying flesh, but leaving it unbuttoned down the front. One foot took a step toward the couch, but the other stayed put. “Once upon, a time,” he said, “I wasn’t quite, the man I am, today. I was into, bad things. Drugs, mostly. Other things, too. That life caught, up with, me. A batch, of drugs I, was making… it blew up, in my face. Chemicals poured, through my blood. The damage to, my body was, impossible to survive.”
“But you did.” Addie was trying to picture Mac, this gentle and misshapen giant, being a drug manufacturer and dealer. It was a past he must have worked hard to put behind him. “You survived, and you’re here. Right?”
He shook his head. “I’m only here, by accident. The explosion, did something, to me. I’m not, quite dead, and not, quite alive. Can you guess, how old, I am?”
The question took Addie by surprise. She couldn’t imagine what that had to do with anything. “I don’t know, Mac. Maybe in your fifties?”
“Heh. Glad you’re, sitting down. I was, born in, eighteen hundred, and fifty-eight.”
Addie wasn’t sure she heard that correctly. “Mac, that would make you more than a hundred and fifty years old!”
“Which is, something you don’t, have to tell, me.” He pulled open the side of his shirt, looking down at his body. “This is, how I am. I don’t die. I’m just, always dying.”
“Why don’t you just end it?” That was a morbid thought, she knew, but still she had to ask. It was obvious how much pain Mac was in, now that she could see the problem hidden behind the makeup. He was tormented by what he was. After more than a century of this wouldn’t anyone try to kill themselves?
But then he smiled at her, one corner of his mouth curling and the other just lifting up. “As wrong as, my life has, gone… I like living, far too, much. The sun, on my face. The taste of, a good, hamburger. Even the, people here, in Shadow, Lake. I don’t want, to leave. So, I don’t. Could I, kill myself? Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t, know if, it’s even possible.”
Addie’s heart went out to him. She had to believe there was a lot more to the story than he was telling her. A story that spanned one hundred and fifty years. Hard to believe. No. Not just hard, impossible. Yet here was the proof right in front of her face. “So the night of the debate?”
“Yes. I was, here. Touching up, my body. The rot, comes and goes. That night, it took me, longer than, I expected. I came, to Shadow Lake, to hide from, my past. Now that you, know what I am, my secret, is in, your hands.”
“Well, I suppose that goes both ways now, doesn’t it? You know my secret, and I know yours. I’m guessing in your hundred-plus years you’ve run into a few witches? That’s how you knew what me and my sisters were?”
He nodded again. “Yes. Most of them, were decent, people. Some of them, have even tried, to fix me.”
There was an unspoken question in those words. Mac was wondering what sort of person Addie would turn out to be now that he’d literally put his fate in her hands. If she breathed anything about his condition to anyone, he would have to leave Shadow Lake forever, and find some other place to hide.
Addie had come here looking for a murderer. What she had found was a man with a deep, dark secret, but one that wasn’t hurting anyone but him. She was one of the protectors of Shadow Lake. The question that rose in her mind now, unbidden, presented her with a tough decision.
Did Shadow Lake need protecting from a living corpse like Mac?
She got up from the loveseat, and came over to him. She stood toe to toe with him. When she lifted a hand, streaks of her pearlescent magic were already trailing from her fingers. He didn’t try to stop her. He just stood there as she reached her hand forward, and touched the spot on his side.
The feeling of the dried, flaking skin was repulsive, but she kept her hand there and let her magic flow. This was a complicated spell, and one that she had never been very good at, but she knew the basics and had used it before. Nothing that would attract the big baddies to town. Just a flash of her power, and a wave of her hand, and she was done.
Blinking at her, Mac pulled asi
de his shirt and looked down at himself. The area of decay had shrunk. It wasn’t gone, but the edges had crawled closer together and the color had lightened to a dark, dark gray. His lips parted in a silent gasp, and his eyes flicked up to her… first one, and then the other.
“You tried, to heal me,” he whispered.
Addie was a little out of breath. All she could do was nod her head and step back. After a moment, when the room stopped spinning, she cleared her throat. “This is the best I can do, Mac. I’m sorry. There are witches who specialize in healing. I know one in Ireland who’s really good at it.”
He shook his head, rotating his arm on that side to test what she had done. “I have, been to the, best healers. I’ve even, tried going, to necromancers. This can not, be healed. What you’ve done… I feel, better. Thank you.”
Addie tried not to grimace in distaste when he mentioned necromancers. People who trafficked in raising the dead were the lowest of the low. If she was lucky she would never have to see one here, in Shadow Lake.
“I have to go,” she told him. “Um. I’m sorry for intruding. Thank you, for telling me your story.”
Touching the wound at his side gingerly, smiling to see it so much better, Mac chuckled deep in his chest. “Intrude, any time, you like.”
After taking just two steps toward the hallway Addie stopped. “Can I ask you something?”
His eyes studied her. “Yes?”
“Do you know anything about Seth Hunter taking bribes from Cavallo Raithmore?”
Mac thought about it for only a few seconds. “No. I will, tell you, this. Seth was, not the, altar boy that, everyone thought he, was. The selectmen, caught him last week, charging a room, at a hotel, on the, town’s credit card. I had, an argument, with him, in his office. He said it, was a, mistake. He promised, to fix it.” He frowned. “I was going, to suggest, to the board, that we check, all of our accounts. To see, if he made, any other, ‘mistakes’ like that. Guess there’s, no reason to, now.”
Interesting, Addie thought. “Thank you, Mac.”
He touched his side again. “Thank you, Addie.”
Outside of Mac’s house Addie started her long walk home. This morning they had started with a list of three suspects. Eleanor could not be the killer because of her alibi. Now, after talking to Mac and learning his secret, she was sure that he wasn’t the killer either. Now, the only suspect she had was Cavallo, the prancing horse-man.
Or was there someone else?
Chapter 11
Once again, laughter filled the usually silent halls of Stonecrest.
Addie was only a little out of breath by the time she walked through the protective barrier around their land and then up the driveway, and in through the front door. It wasn’t an overly long walk from the middle of town to here but what she had done for Mac McDougal had taken a lot out of her. As much as she hated it whenever someone repeated that old, tired line about how magic always came at a price, she couldn’t deny there was a little bit of truth to it.
When she heard voices from the living room down the hall, and then Kiera’s laughter, the tension in her muscles eased a bit. On the way here, on top of the mystery of Seth’s death, she had been stressing about what she would find once she got home. Kiera would have had time to talk to Alan by now, and explain what they really were. That could have gone a dozen different ways.
Apparently, it had gone pretty well.
Just as she was about to head right down the front hall and join her sisters, a huge black tomcat walked across her path, coming out of one room, and heading for another.
“Domovyk!” she called to him, surprised to see him. “Hey, there you are.”
He froze in his tracks, in that way that cats can do, his tail lashing once and then sticking straight out. It was like he thought he could disappear if he just stood perfectly still.
“Dom, I can see you.”
Slowly he turned just his head to face her, one ear flicking. “Uh, hello. How are you doing this day?”
As much as they had accepted Domovyk into their family, he was still a recent addition, and some of his mannerisms were hard to read. He was a bigger cat than Doyle, and just as proud, claiming to be from a royal line of cats in his own right. Maybe that was the reason they could both speak, she thought. Something to do with the bloodlines. His accent was Ukrainian, and it sort of sounded like Russian, but not exactly so. His startling green eyes flashed as they caught the light.
“Where have you been?” she asked him. “I haven’t seen you in a couple of days.”
He blinked. “You asked me what?”
“Where’ve you been?” she repeated for him.
“Ah. Well. You know. I have been here, and I have been there. Errands. I have been doing errands. Now I must be going somewhere that is not where I am standing. Um. Buvai!”
Then he was bounding off, disappearing through the dining room. Addie knew that last word as a friendly goodbye in his native tongue. No doubt, he would be heading for the cat door at the back of the house to continue whatever errands he’d been running. Whatever he was up to, it was beginning to concern her. This was the cat who had been the familiar of Belladonna Nightshade the evil witch until just about a week ago. Could a cat change that much overnight?
Her sister Willow trusted him. Addie supposed, for now, that would have to be good enough. And speaking of her sisters…
She poked her head around the corner to look into the living room. Kiera was smiling, seated right next to Alan, who was right in the middle of some story about himself. Addie only caught every other word. Willow sat on the couch opposite them, one leg crossed over the other, one arm laid over the back of the couch. She looked over at Addie with an amused expression.
“Come on in, sis. There’s no sense hiding out in the hallway. Alan was just telling us about some of his foster parents’ Christmas traditions.”
“Oh, Sister Addie,” Kiera said with a joyful excitement, “come in, come in. You have to hear this. There was this thing they did with bread… well, you tell it, Alan.”
He looked a little shy now that Addie was there, and she could only imagine that he felt like he was on display for the sisters. He scratched at the side of his head, just above his ear, his smile lopsided. “Well, it was just something that my mom and dad, um, I mean my foster mom and dad… something they did.”
Kiera laid her hand on Alan’s knee, a gesture that was at once proper and familiar, and almost motherly. “It’s all right, Alan. They were your parents for all these years. I’m grateful to them for raising my son to be such an amazing man.”
He put his hand over hers. “Well, I didn’t realize that my mother would be such an interesting woman. All these years, I’ve been wondering what you would be like. Never once did I imagine you and your sisters would be witches!”
Addie tried not to let her surprise show. “So you told him? He knows?”
Kiera nodded. “He does.”
“It’s okay,” he said, to all three of them. “At first I was weirded out by all of this. And when those books came flying off the shelves… wow. I didn’t know there were real witches out there. Or that they could do things like that!”
A little look went around the room between the sisters. Those books coming off the shelves hadn’t been any of their doing. That had been Alan, using an untapped magic that he didn’t even know he had. Somehow, he had inherited an ability for it from his mother. That hardly ever happened. Usually, with very few exceptions, it was the girls of a family who inherited the power.
Although, Addie thought to herself, maybe it didn’t come from Kiera at all. Maybe it came from his father.
The power of a fallen angel, running through the veins of a son of a witch. Something about that unsettled her, right down to her core.
“I can’t believe this,” Alan was saying, a wide grin on his face. “I’m back with my mother. After all this time. When I talked to my girlfriend earlier she was so happy or us, too. I can’t wait
for you to meet her.”
“Me either,” Kiera told him. “But, please, remember what I said. We’ve revealed ourselves to you. This secret can not leave the halls of Stonecrest. There are dangerous people out there in the world. Dangerous creatures as well. A whisper of what we are in the wrong ear could put all of us in peril.”
He lifted his hand to his lips and pantomimed turning a key in a lock. “I won’t say a thing. I mean, who would believe me anyway?”
Willow bounced up onto the edge of the couch. “My offer still stands, you know. I can take away this part of your memory when you leave. You’ll remember your mother and Addie, and me of course. The favorite, fun aunt. I’ll just take the troubling bits away if you don’t think you can keep your lips sealed.”
“No, please don’t.” He held up his hands, palms facing her, but he was laughing as he did it. “I won’t say anything. Promise. So you guys are like, what? The protectors of the town?”
“Yup,” Willow said, still on the edge of her seat. “That’s what we’ve been doing for the past two days actually. We’ve been looking for a murderer. How’d that go by the way, Addie? Get anything from Mac?”
Addie stared at her, flicking her eyes toward Alan and back again.
“It’s all right,” Kiera told her. “We’re family. My son needs to know what we do. What did you learn from Mac?”
She was still reluctant, but Kiera was the head of their coven. She was also Alan’s mother. If she said he could hear the details of what they did, then Addie wasn’t going to argue with her. “Well. To start with… Mac’s not alive.”
Kiera’s mouth dropped open. “Excuse me? Mac’s not what?”
She explained the rest of it for them, why he hadn’t been at the debate, what his medical condition was, the whole thing. At least as far as she understood it all. There were questions that she answered, or tried to, and a general sense of disbelief.
“Oh!” Willow exclaimed. “That’s why our spell failed to compel him. You can’t compel a corpse.”
Addie gasped. “Willow!”
