Though I’d saved Bridgette’s life, and she had caught her attacker, I knew this case wasn’t over. Oh no, it would be just getting started.
Just as I was intent on giving Max the silent treatment, he was doing the same to me. Maybe he was trying to punish me for losing him for eight hours. Or maybe it was what I’d said before Bridgette and Sarah had finished in the garage. That Max would be the death of me….
It had been a hell of a reaction. The way his face had paled, the way his eyes had bulged. I doubted it was just leftover stress. So what could it be? Though I had mixed up feelings for Max, I really doubted it would be the end of his life if I popped my clogs. So maybe it was something significant for a fairy? Maybe he’d get in trouble if he failed to keep me safe.
I let those thoughts and more distract me as we walked into the police station. We didn’t even need to ask to see Detective Coulson. He was waiting there in front of reception, arms crossed. As soon as he saw us, his face lit up. It wasn’t with joy, though, just relieved tension. And if you don’t think relieved tension is a thing, it was with Coulson. His broad shoulders and angular face had this unique ability to look stressed and yet calm.
He pushed forward, rubber-soled shoes practically skidding on the buffed floor. “This way.”
Had he been waiting for us? Had Max called ahead? Or maybe Detective Coulson had his own precognitive powers.
Nope, and nope.
As Coulson strode forward, he turned to face me. “I’ve been trying to text you all day. I’m so glad you managed to make it. This case…” he trailed off.
Coulson always did that. Sure, I’d had precious little to do with him, but I was already starting to learn his habits.
And heck, if I survived this case, maybe I’d get to know him even better. After all, it sounded as if my grandmother had worked with him closely, solving the kinds of tricky cases no one else could.
Which I grimaced at.
This was not the life for me.
This time, Coulson led us into a different room. It wasn’t his office. In fact, it looked like an interrogation room.
Instantly, my stomach kicked, but before Coulson could round on me and accuse me of some crime, he leaned forward, plucked several Manilla folders off the table, and started arranging photographs.
My stomach had kicked when I’d been concerned he was here to accuse me of a felony. Now? Oh, it sank. All the way through my torso, all the way through the floor, all the way through the friggin’ center of the Earth. Because he wanted me to do it again, ha? Go inside the mind of a killer, try to figure out what would happen next.
Max didn’t enter the room, just stood outside, arms crossed as usual.
I felt his gaze on the back of my neck, and it was a decidedly unpleasant experience.
Detective Coulson cleared his throat uncomfortably. He flattened down his tie, locked two hands on the edge of the desk, and looked at me entreatingly. He may have been a big, broad-chested man, but right now his gaze was like that of a puppy dog’s. “You need to be alone?” he asked.
I looked from him to Max and nodded. Sure, I needed to be alone. Then I could neatly stack the photos up, cram them back in the file, and find a nice window to climb out of.
“Ah, yes, that would be good.”
Coulson didn’t question, just nodded, looked at me hopefully once more, then walked out of the room. Max? Oh, he took the opportunity to glare at me, and there could be no doubting what that glare meant.
I swallowed, okay, gulped, and waited for the door to close. As soon as it did, I pushed back in my seat, locked a sweaty hand over my mouth, and closed my eyes. And there I would quite happily remain until Coulson got bored and came back in.
Or at least, that’s what I told myself I’d do. Because a funny thing started to happen. Curiosity. It licked at me like flames beginning to caress a dry log.
I tightened my grip on my face, but it didn’t matter – the curiosity couldn’t be contained. It wasn’t morbid curiosity or anything. I didn’t want to stare at the photos to get a thrill from seeing dead people. Quite the opposite, I just… needed to know who they’d been. I needed to witness them, even if I couldn’t make amends for their deaths.
“Yes you can, you can make a difference,” an entirely unwelcome voice rose unbidden from my mind.
I clenched my teeth and tried to force it back, but the voice simply would not comply. “You can make a difference. You can go into the mind of the killer, find him, see the future – change it.”
I shook my head at that intruding voice, trying to dislodge it from my mind. But it would not be shifted. With every second, it grew stronger and stronger until finally I did it – I reached forward and plucked up the first photo.
And I stared at her, one of the victims. Fortunately, it wasn’t a photo taken from the crime scene. No, but the photo directly underneath this one was.
Like I’d said many times before, I had no stomach for violence. I was certainly not the kind of girl who could conjure curiosity in the face of death. It was the exact opposite. And now was no different. My stomach kicked, doing a 360 around my torso until it felt as if I would puke out all my internal organs.
I brought up a hand, clenched it into a fist, and pressed it against my lips until it felt like I was trying to squeeze them through my teeth like spaghetti.
“Come on, come on. Put it down,” I begged myself. Except, I couldn’t do it.
Slowly, achingly slowly, gathering every scrap of courage I’d ever had, I leafed past the photo of the smiling woman to the one beneath. Where she was dead.
Fortunately, the photo did not show her torn-apart chest cavity, blood splattered over the concrete and up the walls. It simply showed her still face, her head tilted to the side, her once life-filled eyes blank and dead. Her face was as pale as the full moon.
Though I could only see a glimmer of blood along her throat, as the photo was a close-up of her head, that was enough. Enough for my stomach to pitch so violently, I had to clap a hand over my mouth before I retched. But I didn’t drop the photo – I just stared at it. And as I did, they came – the sparks. More and more, more and more. They exploded at the corners of my vision as if someone had somehow lodged live wires into my eyes.
I began shaking my head frantically, from one side to another, until my neck cracked. But even then I couldn’t stop.
The sparks swamped me until I could see nothing else. The next thing I knew, I rocked forward, clamping my hands protectively on the table as I lost all awareness of where I was.
Then… then I started to hear footsteps. Slow, methodical – whoever was walking towards me, they weren’t in a hurry.
Even though a part of my brain knew I was still sitting up in the police station, my hands clamped desperately against the lip of the table, the rest of me swore I was lying face down on a cold, cracked concrete floor. It smelt musty, old, and beneath me I could feel a crinkle of thick plastic.
Instantly, the sensation brought back a visceral memory – one that slammed into me and shook through my body as if I’d received a cannon blast to the torso.
When the darklings had attacked me, they’d lured me into a rundown warehouse covered in blood-splattered, thick, mildew-ridden plastic.
Now I swore I felt that same plastic beneath me.
The sparks began to subside, but that did not mean that I was transported back into the here and now – into the interrogation room and the table scattered with photos of dead women.
No, instead, I opened my eyes and saw a pair of shiny black leather shoes in front of me.
I tried to gasp, tried to shift back, tried to call for Max – but I wasn’t in control of my mouth. I could feel my body, and yet, I couldn’t interact with the world around me.
Someone chuckled – the owner of those expensive black leather shoes. I could tell it was him, because his equally expensive trousers crinkled with the move. I watched as a hand pushed down and pressed against the clear plastic by my no
se. On it was a signet ring – a massive gold and ruby affair clasped around his pinkie.
“You’ve been a pain in the ass to get hold of, you know that?” he said.
I didn’t need to struggle to recognize the voice. I didn’t need to scour my memory to figure out who it was. Oh no – instantly I knew it was Fagan.
Fagan. Good god.
He reached down, appeared to grab several strands of my hair, brought them up and inspected them, and then let them drop against my face. I felt a wet splat and realized my hair was covered in blood. With a kicking sensation, I realized the blood had to be my own – my brow felt like it had been sliced in two, and my left arm was wet and completely limp.
Fagan continued to inspect me, clucking his tongue as if he’d just received a parcel in the post with unacceptable damage. “Bit rough on you, was he? Dimitri can be that way. Still, excellent fairy, unlike yours. Pity he abandoned you at the last moment, ha?”
I tried to move my mouth to answer – to scream for Max – but I couldn’t. I still couldn’t control my body. All I could do was remain inside it as I meekly experienced this scene.
“Still, easy for me. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it?” He tilted further down, and finally his face came into view. It was just in time to see a truly sickening smile spread across his lips. Though Fagan was a certain kind of handsome, his features were too intense to be lovable.
He kept picking up scraps of my hair and running it between his fingers. He even leaned down, swiped two fingers across my brow, brought them back, and inspected the dried blood.
He clicked his tongue. “You know, I could have offered you a job,” he began. “But we both know you won’t accept it, right?”
There was a long pause.
I felt myself answering. “Go to hell. Go to hell!”
He chuckled. “Gladly. But I’m afraid I’ll be taking you with me.” With that opaque statement, he pushed to his feet. I watched him shove his hands into his pockets, apparently not caring that his fingers were still caked in my blood. He took several steps back, tilted his head to the side, and smiled once more.
“I was going to leave this up to Dimitri, but he’s busy right now. Plus, even if I don’t get to eat your heart and I have to give it to the Lonely King,” he said conversationally as if we were talking about something as innocent as the weather, “I’ve heard tale you can still absorb a witch’s power even if you’re just the one to carve it out. I sure do hope that’s the case,” he continued in that same apparently innocent conversational tone as he walked over to an upturned milk crate. Sitting on top of it was a sword. A long, shiny one that glinted under the strong lights above.
I tried to jerk back, god did I try to use every muscle I had to get away. There was nothing I could do. Nothing I could do.
My eyes pulsed wide, practically tearing from my skull as I watched him draw the sword up, place it carefully on his arm as he checked the blade, then finally moved towards me.
Thump, thump, thump – the sound of his footfall became everything as fear climbed up and down my back.
No, god, no – I had to get away. Had to get away. But there was nothing I could do.
No more time.
Fagan reached me. He stood above me for several seconds, twisting the sword around in his grip as he stared at me covetously. His brow was smooth, his cheeks slack, and his eyes? Two pinpricks of greed and hatred.
No more time.
He sliced towards me, plunging the sword through the center of my chest. And me? I died.
…
I didn’t have the breath to scream. I couldn’t even figure out where I was anymore.
One scene became overlain with the other – my bleeding, dead body on top of that plastic covered floor and yet my body as it sat there in the interrogation room. A mass of sensations, a cloud of fear – it was the most confusing, awful experience of my life.
I struggled to pull myself out of that vision – struggled to convince myself that I was alive. I was here – hands on the table, body in the chair, sweaty brow plastered against the manila folder beneath me. I was here, I was alive.
And yet I was there, I was dead. My chest had been carved out – my heart. My heart!
I couldn’t take it anymore. My mind shut down. Dizziness encased me, my thoughts spun, and I felt my body lean back. I fell off the chair, head cracking against the floor. And I, Chi McLane, fell unconscious. When I awoke, everything would change.
Chapter 5
It took a long time to rouse. My head didn’t feel like it was attached anymore. My thoughts didn’t feel like they were mine. Everything simply spun and slipped around me as if my sensations had been loaded into a blender and set to maximum chop.
The first thing I became aware of was my breathing – heavy, uneven, pressured.
… No, it wasn’t my breathing. It was someone else’s.
I started to feel the lights, feel the bed beneath me, hear some kind of machine.
But not the bed, not the lights, not the hum of electricity – none of them were enough to pull me out of my reverie. No, it was that breathing. That pressured, stressed breathing. Somehow, it was like rungs on a ladder – a ladder I could climb until I found the strength to open my eyes.
I heard someone push to their feet, press towards me. I felt two large, warm, reassuring hands clasp around my hand and wrist.
I tilted my head and tried to blink back against the strong illumination of the lights above me and the equally strong light streaming in through the window behind.
“Chi, thank god – you’re awake. Finally.”
Max.
At first, a surge of welcome happiness spread through my heart at his words and his presence. It had been his breathing, ha? His presence that had finally brought me back to the land of the living.
The sun was streaming in through a window behind him, and it lit up his body as he leaned forward. And Max? Max smiled.
I’d seen a lot of smiles in my life – but precious few from Max. And yet, the way his lips spread wide, the way his chin crinkled down and his cheeks met his eyes – Christ, it was the nicest thing I’d ever seen.
And yet, of course, it couldn’t last.
Rather abruptly, he pulled away from me. “What happened?” he demanded.
I blinked. I scrunched my eyes up, felt my nose crinkle hard as I pushed my mind into the task of answering that question.
What happened?
The last I remembered….
I half closed my eyes. I’d… I’d been in the interrogation room in the police station, looking over photos. Terrifying photos….
No, that wasn’t right. I’d been in a factory somewhere, strong lights above me, blood-covered, mildew-infested plastic had been beneath me. There’d been a man – shiny shoes. Fagan! A sword.
And he’d, he’d….
I jerked back, yanking both hands up and cramming them over my chest as I frantically searched for a hole in my torso.
Max bucked forward, grabbed my wrists, brought them down, and stopped me from tearing a hole in my medical tunic. “Chi, calm down. Calm down. You’re all right. You’re in the hospital. Nothing happened to you. Did you have a vision?”
A vision?
No. It couldn’t have simply been a vision. It was too visceral, too real. Too violent. I’d felt my blood, my heart – my beating heart take its last—
“Chi,” Max leaned in, the light highlighting him once more, “you’re here. You’re fine. I’m with you. Just breathe. Just breathe.”
Just breathe, ha? It was that easy, was it?
I’d died!
I squeezed my eyes shut as tears touched my cheeks and trailed down my throat.
Though I could feel my chest, and though my heart beat at a million miles an hour, I could also feel it still as it was sliced through with a sword.
I didn’t sob, didn’t cry – just pressed myself as far back into the pillow and mattress as I could as I screwed my eyes shut until
it felt like I was trying to force my eyeballs through the back of my skull.
But just before I could give in to that awful sensation again, Max leaned forward, took his hand from my wrist and placed it gently along my jaw. The feeling was electric. As his fingers rested against my cheek and throat, it was as if my fear gave in.
Though his touch was the most welcome, reassuring thing in the entire world – he was also using magic on me. Subtle, but there. I felt tantalizing tingles of power charge down his hands and sink into my throat, plunging quickly into my chest. And as they did, the awful, visceral sharpness of the memory started to wane until finally I opened my eyes.
I stared at him. But, for a flickering moment, I swore I didn’t see him. Because I swore I wasn’t in hospital at all. I was back on that green pastureland, that beautiful sunshine streaming down from above. And beyond? I heard those horse hooves, someone traveling towards me, someone screaming my name.
Someone reached me, clasped my shoulders, and pulled me up from the grass—
Just as soon as the vision began, it ended in a snap as Max jolted backward.
I opened my eyes to stare at him, just as a slick of sweat spread across his brow.
He didn’t appear to know what to do with his hands, and he clutched them uselessly by his sides.
He always did this whenever I glimpsed that pastureland, whenever I heard those voices. Was it something I wasn’t meant to see? But I saw it every single time he used his magic on me.
We remained in silence for several seconds until Max made the first move. He walked towards me, steps unsure, throat stiff as he swallowed hard. “You’re right,” he defaulted to saying. “But what happened? Did you see? Did you manage to get inside the mind of any of the victims? Did you manage to figure out who the next victim will be?”
Victim. Victim. As soon as he said those words, I felt Fagan slice his sword through my chest. This time, however, I didn’t react with hysteria as I bucked back and forth in my bed. I brought up one hand, rounded it into a fist, and pressed it against my chest. “Yes,” I stuttered. “I… I think I know who his next victim will be.” It was a miracle I could control my tone. A miracle I could stem the tears that were threatening to wash down my cheeks like snowmelt.
A Lying Witch Book Two Page 6
