by Jayne Hawke
“And who knows what else he knows, or where he is,” I said.
“You can’t tell me it’s easy having that wear on you,” he said gently.
It was easier than I was ready to admit to him. My life had been devoted to hiding and keeping my secrets for the last eight years. One little stalker wasn’t throwing me as much as it might a normal person. Sometimes I envied those normal people.
“There’s no point in sitting around weeping about it. We have something new we can use to hunt him down with and end this. I don’t believe in letting life happen to me.”
Elijah stayed close to me as we walked into the fish ’n’ chip store. It was remarkably quiet with only one person ahead of us. I didn’t need to look at the menu to know what I was ordering. Haddock and chips with curry sauce was the only thing I had eyes for. My stomach growled. The adrenaline from the fight was wearing off, and it was beginning to reveal the toll on my body. The exhaustion was slipping in.
I wasn’t surprised when Elijah placed the pack order. The two humans serving us appeared to be used to him. They didn’t flinch when he ordered enough food for ten people. We leaned against the counter and looked out across the pebble beach as the world continued on around us. One day I’d be able to do that without maintaining a state of vigilance and concern, I hoped. There had to be a time when I could just live and enjoy each moment as it came. Elijah leaned in and grazed his teeth over the tip of my ear sending a shiver down my spine. I increasingly hoped that he would be there to enjoy those moments with me.
“You don’t have to be strong all the time you know,” he said.
“Is that your way of saying you need a hug?” I teased.
He laughed and shook his head.
“There’s nothing wrong with needing a hug sometimes,” he said solemnly.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him tight, then I pulled back and wrinkled my nose.
“How are you still so soggy?”
“I can take them off if you’d rather...”
“I don’t know, you’d have a flock of women throwing themselves at you. Do you think you can handle that?”
He pulled me close to him.
“There’s only one woman I care about right now.”
“Jess is a real gem, I have to admit. Although I don’t understand how she can eat so much.”
Elijah leaned in.
“You’re stubborn. Infuriating. Fiercely independent. And I can’t get you out of my head,” he whispered before he kissed me.
“You forgot kick ass,” I whispered after.
When we returned to the office, Jess was fully clothed and dry again. Rex was fast asleep on the couch where Elijah usually sat, and Liam was bouncing on the balls of his feet with a tablet in his hands.
“What did we miss?” Elijah asked as he set the bags of food down on the table.
“So, I was digging into finfolk. They’re actually a really interesting race. They’re quite separate from the rest of the fae. Some people argue they aren’t actually fae but a weird offshoot unto themselves. Others say they’re connected to mermaids somehow, an evolutionary branch perhaps. There are arguments around the island and the city too. Many fae say that neither exist on the fae plane, which would go along with the theory that they’re not actually fae but something else.
“Isn’t that fascinating? We could be dealing with a being that sits outside of the established hierarchy of beings. Of course, there’s a chance that they’re now extinct, although no one knows what happened to them. Some say that they found a way to stop the finwives from turning into hags so they went and hid in their city, or on their island. The problem is, there are still sightings of them sometimes. Although there are arguments about that, too-”
Elijah put up his hand.
“Liam, do you have anything we can use?”
The fox frowned at his tablet and scrolled through his notes for a minute.
“Well, there are no finfolk registered in or around the city. In fact, there are no finfolk registered anywhere at any time. There is a new sidhe mixed breed in the city. He has a property near the ocean. I don’t know what he’s mixed with, though, so I still need to do some digging. Of course, that’s only for people who moved here recently. If we look at sidhe mixes in total across the city, then there are a few hundred potential stalkers. I can narrow it down to about fifteen who don’t know what they’re mixed with.”
“We know he had to have enough time here to make all those constructs. If they had walked in from somewhere, or even more so if he’d had to ship them from the Continent, they would have raised red flags all over the place,” I put in.
“Can water constructs swim?” Jess asked, as much to herself as anyone.
“Narrow it down further. You’re the best at this. We know you can do it,” Elijah said.
The fox shifter beamed at him before he put the tablet down and claimed his portion of the food.
“Is there anything relevant about finfolk that might help us figure out why Lily or where he’s hiding?” Elijah asked Liam.
“The why is difficult,” Liam said around a mouthful of battered plaice.
He swallowed and took a big gulp of lemonade.
“See, stalkers develop these fantasies in their head. He might have spotted Lily in a coffee shop one day and everything spiralled from there. Lily didn’t have to do anything specific or special.”
“What can I say, I’m just that awesome,” I said.
Rex snorted. He’d woken up when the food had been placed down on the table.
“Has your surveillance shown anyone that spends a lot of time around Lily?”
“Besides you, you mean,” Liam said with a grin.
Elijah gave him a flat look.
“Yes.”
“There’s no one, but as we said glamours could easily hide him.”
“Surely a glamour only covers so much? Can’t you pick up gaits? Mannerisms?” I said.
Liam rocked his hand back and forth.
“Sort of, but that’s complicated and very hit and miss.”
“We’ll get him. Finfolk are really rare, he won’t be able to hide for much longer now.”
I really hoped so.
Forty-Three
I got home a lot later than I’d expected. We had ended up laughing and talking about anything and everything. Something felt wrong as I stepped through the front door. I couldn’t quite put my finger on exactly what it was, but there was a sensation of emptiness. Wrongness.
“Castor?” I called.
Nothing.
He had no plans that he’d mentioned, and he usually texted me when he was going out. We watched out for each other. The emptiness spread through my chest as I padded through our home. A silence hung over the place like a funerary shroud. I found myself walking slowly, carefully, as I did when I was sneaking somewhere to acquire something. Something had been in my home, or was still there. I just didn’t know quite what.
There was no mess, no signs of a struggle anywhere. My security system hadn’t been touched. I’d have noticed that as I pulled up in the driveway. Castor’s car had been there where it belonged. Normally, when he was home, there was noise. The TV, a radio, him singing something he’d heard somewhere. Even when he was sleeping, there was something, a white noise he’d put on to help him sleep. Now there was nothing but the dense silence. I hadn’t realised how much comfort that constant sound brought me until then.
My chest was growing tighter. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. The feeling of wrongness was threatening to consume me. When I got upstairs to his bedroom, I knew that it would be vacant. He was gone.
A witch can feel her familiar. There’s a bond between us that’s unbreakable and unlike anything else. Castor was always there, a soft warmth at the end of an invisible rope. For the first time since I was sixteen, I couldn’t feel him.
Someone, or something, had taken him.
A rage formed deep within me, an internal whirlwind of fi
re that would destroy anything that dared touch a hair on my fox’s head. I was ready to tear the bastard limb from limb and reconstitute them so I could do it again. They would feel pain beyond any imagining.
Exhaling slowly, I pushed the rage aside and tried to focus. The rage would help me fight hard and dirty, but it wasn’t of any use to me while I was tracking Castor down. Closing my eyes, I reached out with my witch senses to try and find anything that could help me. He needed me to put my training to good use to bring him home.
Emptiness. Not a single trace of strange magic anywhere within the house. The natural ambient magic appeared to be entirely untouched. There was no way for a magical being to come into a space like that and not leave a faint trace of themselves. Either the person I was dealing with was far beyond my capabilities, or Castor hadn’t been taken from our home.
Turning a slow circle, I looked for something, anything, that would give me a clue. A glance down the stairs showed that a note was hanging by the corner from the letter slot. I hadn’t noticed it when I’d come in because I hadn’t looked back at the door. The second note was sitting on the bottom stair. That had arrived after I’d moved upstairs. I hadn’t felt a thing, which confirmed that whoever knew who I was was very skilled.
I forced myself to be calm and controlled every little movement. The anger was present, but I wouldn’t allow it to fuck things up and make me sloppy. I needed to be precise and controlled, for Castor’s sake. Anger can be useful in a fight, but blind rage is called that for a reason. Leaning down, I picked up the note from the bottom stair and immediately felt the fractured magic marking it as from a witch. Nothing new there.
The note on the door was my priority. The stalker had killed before. He was the more likely perpetrator of this crime. Swallowing hard, I opened the note.
You deserve so much better than those weak men. I’m helping you.
I crumpled it into a small ball and threw it down the hallway. It hadn’t damaged the note in any way, but it had made me feel a little better. He hadn’t said that he’d taken Castor, but he was my most likely bet. Given that he had demonstrated such possessiveness, I doubted that he realised Castor was a brother to me not a lover.
Exhaling slowly, I reminded myself that Castor was a skilled fighter and not without his own magic. Shifters couldn’t usually work with magic, but he was no ordinary shifter. He was tied to a goddess, and that granted him certain extra privileges, apparently.
“Hold onto the rage Lily, use it when the time’s right,” I told myself.
The second note was crisp, precise.
So much wasted potential. Don’t fear, you’ll have no choice but to use it soon.
Fantastic. The creep who knew me from my coven days was threatening me. The day was getting better and better. That did make me doubt my thinking that the stalker had taken Castor, though. Getting him back would certainly test my potential.
My phone buzzed. Elijah was ringing.
“Is everything ok?” he asked.
“No, why?”
“What happened? Liam said Castor isn’t answering his phone.”
“The stalker took him,” I ground out.
He didn’t know about the other guy. It was easier to withhold the information and assume it was the stalker. I hated keeping so many secrets, but I was doing it to keep us both safe.
“We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
He hung up.
I closed my eyes and tried to find the central well of calm I needed to work complicated magic. There were rituals to track people down. I was going to need one. That fucker wasn’t going to keep my familiar from me, and he would pay when I got there.
“Rex, check the perimeter. Jess, check for small details around the entry and exits; Liam, do your tech thing,” Elijah commanded as he got out of his car.
He was firmly in alpha role, and I appreciated it. I needed to focus on my own magic and methods. The pack was a welcome presence, though. There was a real chance that their senses and abilities would allow them to find something I couldn’t. I held out a little hope that I was being melodramatic and Castor was just with his kelpie lover.
His pack split up and quickly got to work with their assigned jobs. Elijah pulled me into a hug, wrapping me his powerful arms and offering comfort against his muscular chest.
“We’ll find him,” he said softly.
“Too fucking right, we will. I’m about to do a ritual to get an exact location on him. Nothing can hide my familiar from me for long,” I growled.
The anger protected me from the fear. It drove me forward, keeping me focused and ready for what might come.
Elijah looked down at me with incredible pride written across his features.
“That’s my girl,” he said with a grin.
I rolled my eyes at him and marched inside to begin my ritual.
There was no room in my head space for the affection and everything that came with it in that moment. Maybe I was being cold and cruel, but I needed to get Castor back. Elijah was a big boy, he’d live.
Some rituals required candles and all sorts of paraphernalia. I didn’t like working with all of that. A lot of it was there to help focus the witch’s mind rather than any actual magical need. I preferred to keep things as clean as possible, and I refused to chant. I just felt stupid chanting.
Castor had taught me most of the ritual work I knew, and he helped me keep it quick and pure. I’d stepped inside the circle carved into the wooden floor in the dining room. It was a pretty standard thing for witches to have at least one perfectly drawn circle in their home somewhere. You never knew when you’d need it to help you pull together the big complicated magics that rituals dealt with. Sitting down in the very centre, I quickly drew sharp-edged sigils that would strengthen my bond with Castor and focus my mind. Each was a collection of angles around a swirling centre.
The final sigil was my symbol for Castor himself, a small asymmetrical set of four circles with two points like fox ears. I held onto the rage within me like a life raft. There was a very real chance this stalker would try and kill him. We might not have much time. Although, I didn’t know if the goddess would play a role should someone try and seriously harm her fox. I’d never been under any illusion that he was truly mine, after all.
Closing my eyes, I reached out and grasped onto every tiny scrap of magic I could. The natural ambient magic had returned to the house, and I’d opened a couple of windows to allow me to grasp onto the magic outside as well. Elijah was leaning against the doorframe of the room watching me. I felt more than saw him. Taking a risk, I plucked a few pieces of wolf magic from him to add strength to the weaving. It was incredibly rude and put me at risk of feeling his wrath, but I didn’t have time to ask nicely. It wouldn’t bring him any harm, after all.
The magic came together like a patchwork quilt, odd edges and uneven stitches, but it worked. An image began to form in my mind, a dark cave near the ocean. Rough walls hewn by centuries of water and erosion. Castor was alive, and he was being held in the cave about thirty minutes from where I was. It was set back in the cliffs. A few people took the risk of trying to spear fish near there; the mermaids and other sea monsters hated that.
Opening my eyes, I stood and wrote down every little detail while it was in my head. The cave was large, and I hadn’t felt any traps there or nearby. The tide was coming in, which would make climbing the rocks to get across to it treacherous.
Most importantly, Castor was still alive.
Forty-Four
“Castor wasn’t taken from home. I have footage of him walking down along the coastal path and then disappearing,” Liam said.
That gave me a tiny shred of relief. The idea of this bastard taking Castor from our own home hadn’t sat well with me. We’d have had to move.
“Do you know who or what took him?” I asked.
“No. There’s a blur of colour and motion which looks to me like someone was screwing with a cluster of glamours to make it impossible t
o recognize them.”
That sounded like the stalker. At least it was a familiar foe.
“Was Castor injured?”
“Not that I saw. It was hard to make out exactly what happened. It really was just a blur. Castor was there one moment, gone the next.”
Castor should have put up a big fight. Whoever took him must have been talented and thus dangerous. We would need to be careful going to this cave.
“Give us everything you have,” Elijah said to me.
“Castor’s in the large cave in the cliffs where the morons try and spear hunt sometimes. The tide’s starting to come in, the rocks will be wet and slippery. He’s alive, pissed off, and from what I could see he’s alone. The ritual was to find Castor, so I can’t be sure about the presence of other beings in the cave. I can, however, tell you that Castor is very skilled in combat. He will have put up a big fight, or at least he would have under normal circumstances. If he was taken that easily, we’re dealing with someone dangerous.”
I dragged my fingers through my hair. We had no choice but to go in blind. This stalker had demonstrated he could control powerful constructs. With the sea right there lapping at the cave, he potentially had even more magic at his fingertips.
Normally, I like to do as much recon as possible, but time was ticking. Who knew what the stalker had planned for Castor, but I very much doubted it was a tea party. I turned to Elijah to tell him that I was going alone. I couldn’t put the pack at risk like that.
He stared me down as he stood at his full height with his arms crossed. There wasn’t a chance that he was going to stay out of this.
“Castor is a friend. Don’t even think it,” he growled.
“Whoever we’re going against is powerful, and dangerous.”
“And we’re just dumb beasts,” Rex said.
“Don’t put words in my mouth, asshole.”
It hadn’t been exactly what I was thinking. Shifters had some magical resistance, but claws and teeth were always going to struggle against powerful magic. If this stalker decided to pull on the sea and drown them, I didn’t know if I’d be able to save them.
