Witch Undercover

by Elle Adams

  “It won’t transform me into a toadstool or anything?” I asked.

  “Not unless you drink the entire barrel.” He bared his teeth in a grin. “For humans, one cup is enough to make them forget their own names, but us fair folk are made of stronger stuff.”

  True. Not a word he’d said was a lie, so I handed over the cash for a mug of goblin brew. Despite its unappealing appearance, the brew tasted as sweet as it smelled, and after a sip or two, I did feel less like a child lost in a supermarket.

  “I’m told goblin fruit is stronger,” I said to the goblin. “Does anyone sell that here?”

  “Goblin fruit?” He hooted with laughter. “No. It spoils too easily. We make the brew when we’re not on the road.”

  True. He was telling the truth, as far as he knew, but perhaps someone else here might have a different story to tell. The fruit to make the goblin brew had to come from somewhere, after all.

  I walked away from the stall and wove through the crowd. From the sheer volume of people around me, not everyone here had come from Fairy Falls. Everyone looked paranormal, though, and my senses didn’t pick up on anyone out of place. Most of the fairies were dancing in front of the band, their bright wings fluttering. Not a good place for me to try asking them questions, so I stayed among the stalls, drinking my goblin brew in the hope that I’d eventually stop feeling out of place.

  My gaze fell on a stall on my right, selling various potted plants. Behind it stood a female goblin with longer hair than the others I’d seen, wearing a dress made of dandelions.

  “Hey,” I said to the female goblin. “I don’t suppose you sell goblin fruit?”

  “Who wants to know?” she said. “We’re perfectly legal, we are.”

  “I’m not saying you aren’t,” I said hastily, “but a man recently stumbled into Fairy Falls who shouldn’t have known about the paranormal world. We think someone gave him goblin fruit, so I just wondered if someone had bought any….?”

  “No,” she said. “We only sell seedlings, and they take a long while to grow. No fruit here.”

  “Did you sell any seedlings to someone from Fairy Falls?” I asked.

  “We don’t ask where anyone comes from,” she said. “This is a safe place.”

  I kept hearing that. And I wanted it to stay safe, for the sake of the other fairies. At least the goblin brew dulled my frustration. The music seemed to be growing louder, faster, more insistent, vibrating in my bones. No matter how far I walked, I couldn’t escape the rhythm. Finally, I gave in and let my wings stretch out the way they wanted to, beating behind my shoulders in a way that felt more natural than walking on two feet.

  Next thing I knew, I’d found my way to the dance floor, or maybe the dance floor had found me. The sound of the music and the beat of my feet and my wings overwhelmed everything else, and the fairies’ laughter and music swept me into a whirling circle.

  After a while, I was vaguely aware of someone tugging on my arm. Buck’s face swam before mine, strange to my newly altered eyes. Wings poked out of his shoulders, while his face was shinier and pointier than usual. I smiled and tried to pull him into the group dance, but he tugged me out of line, yelling something in my ear. I heard the word ‘Nathan’.

  Then I saw Nathan himself, standing behind Buck with a concerned expression on his face. He caught my hand in his, dragging me out of the dance. I heard exclamations of disappointment from behind me.

  “It’s okay, he’s with me!” I tried to say, but nothing came out but a slurred jumble.

  Nathan tightened my grip on his hand as I fell against him, the world lurching sideways. The ground’s tilt made me stagger into his arms, and all went black.

  7

  The next morning, I was pretty sure I was dead. Or dying. The instant my eyes opened, I flew to the bathroom to throw up. Then I lay on the floor for a bit, vaguely aware that I was still in my fairy form and couldn’t even lie down comfortably.

  Even werewolf cocktail hangovers had nothing on this. I pushed to my feet and staggered out of the room, hanging onto the door as though I’d fall into empty space if I let go.

  “Blair!” Alissa appeared in front of me, concerned. “Are you okay?”

  “I think I’m dying.”

  “What did you drink?” she asked. “You look worse than Lou after a night at the cocktail bar.”

  “Goblin brew.” I pushed myself upright, my head pounding. “It’s evil, evil stuff. No wonder that poor Riff guy is still a mess.”

  “Actually, he’s ready to be discharged today,” she said. “I was going to tell you after work yesterday, but you disappeared in the market and I didn’t know where you’d gone until Nathan brought you home.”

  I groaned. “Just great.”

  “It’s good news,” Alissa said. “Riff remembers who he is and where he came from, so he should be able to point us in the direction of who bewitched him and lured him to town.”

  I looked up. “He will?”

  “Yeah, but I’m a bit concerned I might have to take you to the hospital in his place,” she said. “Why did you drink it?”

  “I thought it wasn’t supposed to have a strong effect on fairies,” I mumbled, my face heating in shame.

  “Who told you that?” she asked. “The goblins?”

  “They didn’t lie,” I said. “Maybe there’s too much human in me after all.”

  Not only was I supposed to be seeing my foster parents later this morning, I’d also foolishly agreed to meet up with those two fairies this afternoon as well. I couldn’t cancel on them now. It was entirely my own fault I’d ended up in this state, and to add insult to injury, I’d spent hours surrounded by fairies yesterday and had utterly failed to ask them any substantial questions. Though if I had, I probably wouldn’t remember anything they’d told me anyway.

  “Nathan came to check on you twice last night,” Alissa added. “He’s worried about you.”

  My head throbbed. “I’ll text him, but I need to get my hands on a hangover cure first. I guess I was too addled to take a hangover potion last night.”

  “I gathered,” said Alissa. “So… did you find out anything useful at the market?”

  I thought back to the last time anything had made sense. “I learned that nobody at the market sells goblin fruit, just the seeds, which take forever to grow. Does Riff remember anything about who might have lured him there?”

  “Why not ask him yourself?” she asked. “My grandmother is making arrangements for him to receive some kind of memory spell that will erase his experiences, so we’ll need to get all the information we can from him before then. I wanted to wait for you to wake up before I asked him anything.”

  “Seriously?” I said. “Are you certain he won’t remember anything?”

  “He has people in the normal world who might be worried about him,” she replied. “If you can verify that he speaks the truth, though, I can ask Samuel to read it from your mind if it ever comes up in court.”

  I blinked. “Since when? I thought the vampires were against using their abilities to influence the outcome of trials.”

  “Vincent made an exception for you, remember?” she said. “Samuel would do the same.”

  “I thought it was a one-off.” The idea of opening my mind to the vampires when I had so many secrets swimming in there wasn’t appealing. What if the hunters found out what I knew? The more people who read my thoughts, the more likely it was that they’d realise I’d figured out their secret.

  “He told me to let you know, anyway,” she said. “Are you okay to come to the hospital? We can grab a coffee to go on the way. With an added hangover cure.”

  Somehow, I managed to dress myself despite my banging headache, while Alissa left some food out for the cats. As Alissa had promised, we stopped by Charms & Caffeine for a mug of coffee laced with a potent hangover cure. Layla took one look at my face and gave me a large drink for the price of a small one despite my feeble protests.

  “I am never taking
so much as a sniff of goblin brew again,” I said to Alissa on the way out, holding my coffee close to my chest like a precious object.

  “I don’t blame you,” she said. “You’d think there’d be restrictions on the stuff, but if there were, they’d have to ban the werewolves’ cocktails, too. I guess it’s designed for goblins only. Even elves seem to struggle with the side effects, based on what I’ve seen from Thistle.”

  “Is he still at the hospital, then?” I took a long drink.

  “Unfortunately,” she answered. “I caught him trying to smuggle cocktails into his room again.”

  “Do you think he had a role in what happened to Riff?” I drank more coffee, relieved when the fogginess began to lift. Layla’s potions worked wonders. “I admit, I’m no more enlightened than before after asking around at the market, but it strikes me as more likely to be an accident than anything. He didn’t get hurt.”

  “He’s lucky he didn’t.” She led the way into the hospital, and we headed through the reception area to Riff’s room. Two nurses stood on either side of his bed, including Lou. He glanced at me, a slightly dazed expression on his face. At least he was no longer screaming and calling me a monster.

  Lou stepped to my side and whispered, “We gave him a potion to relax him, so it doesn’t hit him quite as hard when he has to forget.”

  “Hello,” he said, looking up at Alissa and me blearily. “Wild night, wasn’t it? I musta hit my head pretty hard.”

  “Yes, you did,” said Alissa. “You’re almost ready to go, but before you do, we wanted to ask a couple of questions. Do you remember drinking anything at a market?”

  “Market?” he echoed. “Yeah… I guess I remember something like that. It’s blurry.”

  “And do you remember anyone taking you there?” I put in. “Did you meet anyone before you went there, or did you walk there by yourself?”

  A thoughtful look came over him. “I remember being in a field. I think my mates ditched me there, so I went walking on my own…” He trailed off.

  “Yes?” said Alissa.

  “Next thing I remember is waking up by a lake.” He shrugged. “I went walking for a while. Everything else is a blur.”

  That was probably the best we’d get from him. It couldn’t be clearer that he had no memory of how he’d come to be intoxicated, let alone how he’d ended up in town. If the person responsible had intended it to look like a complete accident, they’d succeeded.

  I backed out into the waiting room as my phone buzzed with a message from Nathan asking if I was okay. I texted him back asking him to meet me at the hospital, and then I finished my coffee.

  Lou emerged from the ward a moment later. “What in the world happened to you, Blair? You look like you’ve caught a bad case of flu.”

  “Goblin brew.” I shuddered, tossing my empty coffee cup into a bin. “I should be okay when the effects of this hangover cure kick in.”

  “You’re not the only one,” she said. “The only person in a worse state than you today is Argyle.”

  “Who…?” I looked around and spotted a witch half-asleep in the corner of the waiting room, looking as morose as I felt. Argyle Winthrop. The name rang a bell. Wasn’t she the gardener witch who Pix had mentioned? I’d been looking for her at the market yesterday, before I’d got side-tracked.

  “Poor thing,” said Lou. “I’d go back home to sleep it off if I were you, Blair.”

  Not really an option. While Lou went back into the ward, I made my way over to Argyle’s corner of the waiting room.

  “Hey,” I said to her. “What’re you here for?”

  “I had a rather wild night.” She hiccoughed. “I fell on a Stinging Sneezer when I got back to my shop, and it stung me.”

  That’s when I saw that one of her hands had turned bright purple and was covered in vivid-looking boils. “So were you at the market?”

  She gave another cough. “Where else would I have got this drunk?”

  “Um, have you ever seen that man before?” I asked. “The one I was just visiting? He’s a normal, but we think he might have found his way into the market somehow. I wondered if you saw how he got there.”

  “To be quite frank, I can’t remember how I got there.” She slumped in her seat. “Perhaps I was always there.”

  Oh, boy. I’d have to wait until she sobered up before I got any sense out of her.

  “Mrs Winthrop?” asked Lou. “Come in here, now. Let’s have a look at that hand of yours.”

  Argyle rose to her feet and tottered away. So much for that idea. Still, the odds of her maliciously targeting an ordinary person seemed low. She was in a world of her own.

  As for Riff himself, he didn’t seem to recall anything of the market at all. So did that mean he hadn’t been there when he’d been enchanted?

  Before I could figure out my next move, Madame Grey entered the hospital through the front door. “Are you all right, Blair?”

  “Yeah, I’m just waiting for Nathan,” I said. “We’re heading…”

  “To meet your foster parents,” she said. “Alissa told me. I hope it’s okay if I send someone to keep an eye on things from a distance. Not that I think you’ll make trouble, but things have a tendency to go in unexpected directions wherever you go.”

  That was a kind way of saying I attracted chaos wherever I went. In truth, I should probably be more concerned about potential ways I might accidentally give away my secrets to my foster parents, but I hadn’t entirely shaken off my headache yet. “You aren’t wrong. Oh, Nathan’s here.” I spotted Nathan outside the hospital and ducked out of the doors to join him.

  He greeted me with a hug. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Blair. I have to admit when you said you were at the hospital, I worried.”

  “Nah, I just drank a strong coffee laced with a hangover cure,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with me now but a heavy dose of shame.”

  “So you came here to see the normal,” he said. “I heard he’s going home today.”

  “Yeah, he is, but he still doesn’t remember how he ended up in that state,” I explained. “He didn’t remember much of the market, not that that proves anything. I don’t remember much of yesterday, to be honest.”

  “Did you have the chance to talk to the goblins, then?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but they gave me some of their brew and the rest is history.” I grimaced. “The plus side is that I have a meeting with some fairies this afternoon, so I have a second chance to talk to them. No goblin brew will be involved, don’t worry.”

  His forehead creased. “Are you sure?”

  “Nope, but I’m not sure about introducing my foster parents to this madness, either.” I took in a breath. “So… are you ready to meet them?”

  Because no buses or trains stopped near Fairy Falls, our quickest option was to walk. Or fly. I got my wings out for a bit, not as accustomed to trekking for hours over the hills like Nathan was. I turned back to human form when we drew closer to civilisation—the town of Sloan, which, in my cover story, I called home.

  Now all I had to do was divert my parents’ attention from asking any questions which might poke holes in my story. No pressure.

  It’d been so long since I’d been in the normal world that I’d forgotten how… banal it looked compared to Fairy Falls, with grey streets crowded with traffic and tall buildings masking the scenery. Or maybe it was just my nerves talking. Back in my old life, I’d lived in a shared house with a bunch of students who threw loud parties under my feet, bouncing between jobs as a series of disasters shunted me around in their wake. I couldn’t even ride public transport without it breaking down, while computers crashed when I looked at them. Now I knew those effects were due to the barriers I’d had on my magic before moving to Fairy Falls had unlocked my real powers.

  “I can’t believe I went along with it,” I remarked to Nathan as we walked through the ordinary high street packed with new year’s shoppers. “I mean, I got offered a job I’d never applied
to, was sure I’d hallucinated that the person who was talking to me on the phone was a werewolf, and still showed up for the job interview.”

  “I’m glad you did.” He squeezed my hand. “So, you live here. Or your alter ego does, anyway.”

  “That’s the cover story,” I said. “It’s not like we’d be able to hide any signs of magic if we met up in Fairy Falls. Well. The street where you live looks normal enough, but still.”

  Not that I hadn’t done a spectacular job of wrecking our first family dinner together, regardless. No matter what else might go wrong today, I was fairly sure Nathan wouldn’t sabotage things by accidentally inviting a group of elves to join us. Not to mention the pixie.

  We waited outside the shopping centre in the cold, until I saw a familiar pair approaching us: an older couple, grey-haired, and utterly normal. Mr and Mrs Wilkes were both much more tanned than the last time I’d seen them, but otherwise, they looked exactly the same. Their delighted smiles tugged at something inside me, and I ran to meet them, not caring if I was behaving like a little kid. I felt like one, too, as they swept me into a hug between them.

  Then, when they released me, they turned to face Nathan.

  “So this is the young man who’s monopolising Blair’s attention,” said Mr Wilkes.

  I flushed. “Dad.”

  “I’m Nathan.” He shook my foster dad’s hand. “It’s great to meet you. You too, Mrs Wilkes.”

  She beamed at him, and I dared to relax a little. Of course they’d like Nathan. He was the postcard example of someone who didn’t screw up or attract trouble at every corner like I did. Luckily for all of us, they were used to my penchant for disaster—if not the magical type. They’d raised me, after all.

  We went into the cafe, where I ordered a regular coffee instead of the magical kind I normally went for, silently thanking Layla’s hangover cure for holding up. Mr Wilkes insisted on sitting beside Nathan and wasted no time in engaging him in conversation.

  “And what do you do?” he asked Nathan.

  “I’m a security guard,” he said easily. He did a pretty good job of making his job sound dull to outsiders, if you discounted the overactive werewolves, bickering shifter clans, and the hunters’ constant attempts to get into our town, that is. I appreciated his effort, which was a lot better than my own clumsy attempts to skirt around an explanation of how I’d come to be hired by a recruitment company which I’d never given my CV to.