And, more to the point, could I trust that effect? Should I listen to my heart? Or should I listen to Fagan. Because, like it or not, my vision had been real, and soon, Max would betray me.
Maybe that question blazed through my eyes, because he let his hand drop to my shoulder. “Just hold on. Just trust me,” he added in such a quiet tone it could not carry.
Again, I was faced with that question. Trust or turn away?
And again, I listened to my heart.
“We just need a sample of the dirt,” he said as he reached forward, plucked a tissue from somewhere, and scraped it along my hands.
I felt charges of magic release with the move. They’d been trapped under the clods of earth. And the magic? It was dark, dense, felt like a shadow playing across my skin.
Though I wanted to jerk back, I gritted my teeth and held on until Max had apparently gathered all the dirt he needed.
He raised to his feet, hesitated, and handed the tissue back to Sarah. “We need to figure out where Dimitri is, now,” his voice dropped.
“No, we should be focusing on Fagan,” Sarah demanded.
“Didn’t you listen to what she said? Dimitri’s digging up a dead body. I’ll guarantee you it’s one of your witches,” Max’s voice dropped.
I could see Sarah out of the corner of my eye, and I watched as she seemed to freeze. Her hands shuddered by her sides as her eyes pressed wide open.
Bridgette pushed to her feet. “It’s okay, Sarah – we can catch that bastard. But Max is right. If Dimitri is digging up one of our sisters,” her tone became so twisted it sounded as if she wouldn’t be able to continue, but she took a sharp breath and opened her mouth again, “then we have to stop him. He’ll be doing it for some spell. You know that. He’ll be trying to locate us.”
Sarah closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly shut as tears trickled down her cheeks.
Again, my heart went out to her.
It took a long time, but she finally opened her eyes. She nodded. She accepted the tissue from Max. She clutched her fingers around it tightly, not letting a single speck of the dirt escape as she whirled on her foot and strode towards the center of the circle. “Witches, gather,” she commanded.
Bridgette lingered by my side for a moment, casting her gaze down to me. “You’ll be alright. We’ve got this. You can trust us.” With that, she turned and strode towards the séance.
“Do you need me?” I stuttered.
She turned over her shoulder and shot me a subdued grin. “No, we’ve got this. Just sit this one out.”
I pushed to my feet, not really hearing her, intending to walk towards the circle anyway. Max reached out a hand and locked me in place. “You’ve done enough, Chi,” he said.
There wasn’t a hint of derision in his voice, no disappointment, either. Just pride – pride mixed in with fear.
Slowly, I turned to him. Facing him made everything feel real, closer, more dangerous.
I knew he wanted to ask if I remembered any more details from Dimitri, but he didn’t. He pressed his lips together and just stared at me as if he were trying to take a mental image.
That made my stomach kick, made a new wave of fear rush down my back, prickling and spiking against the skin.
Once more, I turned my head down and faced my hands.
Max wouldn’t let my gaze linger. “Chi, you have to push it out of your mind. You need to concentrate on…” he trailed off as if he couldn’t think of something I should concentrate on right now. The fact I was two hours away from dying, maybe? The fact it wouldn’t be the curse that got me in the end, but one of Max’s friends?
I jerked my gaze up. There was a question I should have asked way sooner. “Who is Dimitri, anyway?” I’m surprised I could control my tone.
Max didn’t answer. Instead, he swallowed the move tight, pushing his Adam’s apple hard against his T-shirt.
“Max?”
He shook his head sharply. “An acquaintance.”
“Acquaintance?”
“A fairy I’ve known for some time.”
“How long is some time?”
He dwindled into silence.
“Max, please, just tell me everything you know. I just need to…” I trailed off.
“He’s a fairy, about 500 years old if my calculations are right. I’ve known him for,” Max pressed his lips together, “sometime.”
Was Max trying to hide his age from me? Was he worried it would pique my already considerable curiosity about his past?
“Max?”
“He’s gone from contract to contract, helping master after master. No loyalty,” he commented, voice dark.
“… You mean, he’s kind of employed by people? Is that how it works with fairies?”
Again Max swallowed. “With some fairies. No loyalty,” he commented to himself under his breath again. “He could never see anything through, Dimitri.”
“Do you think his current master is Fagan?”
It took a long time for Max to shrug. “Probably. It’s hard to say, though. It definitely has to be someone with money – you saw Dimitri’s travel keys, and those things aren’t cheap. They’re also extremely hard to get hold of.”
It was my turn to swallow. “Why… why would he contract himself to Fagan? I mean, what does Dimitri get out of working for someone else?” It probably sounded like an extremely innocent and stupid question and was probably one I should have asked the first day I’d met Max.
It was better late than never.
“It depends on what a fairy lives for,” he commented.
I didn’t understand. I wanted to understand. I searched through his comment for any meaning, but I soon frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, Chi, that now is no time to discuss the finer points of being a fairy. All you need to know about Dimitri is that he is a dark bastard, and that he will switch masters in an instant if he thinks somebody can give him more power. Because that’s his reason for being,” Max said through clenched teeth.
“Power?”
He nodded, the move jerking and shuddering as his neck muscles seized up.
“… How do you know him?” I asked after a considerable pause, the chanting of the witches filtering in behind us.
Now Max dropped eye contact and almost looked as if he wanted to push back, turn, and leave.
“… Max?”
“He once helped me out.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he once offered me a way out of something.”
My stomach kicked. Don’t ask me why my stomach kicked. It wasn’t like Max’s statement meant anything to me. And yet, somehow, it appeared to mean something to my heart. Suddenly, it raced. It wasn’t racing with passion, just a spike of fear. “He offered you a way out of what?” My voice sounded far-off, detached.
“Never mind,” Max said firmly, and this time it sounded as if he really was going to drop the subject. Indeed, he leaned forward, pushed a hand out, and trailed his fingers through some of the dirt that had fallen from my hands and slicked across the floor.
I watched intently.
Maybe he could feel the intensity of my gaze, because he shrugged back, pushed to his feet, finally broke away, and walked towards the edge of the circle of witches.
It drew my attention to them.
They had taken up position in a large circle that spanned most of the expansive room.
Within the circle, I could see the same 100 incense sticks burning, the same hundred candles, and within them, the tissue of dirt Max had taken from my hands.
This isn’t going to work. Fagan is too far ahead of you. Your only chance is to run. A voice suddenly sounded in my mind.
I tried not to pay attention to that voice; I tried to push it back. It was insidious and grew louder as I sat there in a pile of dirt, listening to the witches’ chant.
Maybe my only chance was to leave, was to run, was to get as far away from the witches as I could. That would put Fagan off
the scent, wouldn’t it?
Or maybe it would just lead me right into his hands.
I screwed my eyes shut as I begged my power to return – as I begged it to tell me what to do.
In times of true, perilous danger, sometimes I could see five seconds into the future. I’d be able to use that snippet of the future to change the present. So why couldn’t I conjure that power now? Why couldn’t I call it to me when I needed it most?
I screwed my eyes shut as another surge of emotion shot through my heart, practically blasting me backward.
My powers may be considerable, may be worthy enough to garner Fagan’s covetous attention. But they were also cruel, too. They seemed to be able to get me into trouble, but they weren’t particularly good at setting me free again.
And yet, I didn’t stop. My eyes tightly screwed shut, I kept trying, kept forcing myself into the task of seeing the future. As the witches’ chanting swelled, as the smell of incense and candle wax filled the air, I tried with all my heart to save it – my heart.
For I was my only hope.
Chapter 8
I was back in the restaurant, rugged up on one of the couches in the back room, a warm, steaming cup of cocoa clutched tightly in my hands.
I watched Max, Bridgette, and Sarah as they argued about what to do next.
Max appeared to be unable to keep his eyes off me for long. His gaze kept ticking towards me every several seconds, almost as if he were double-checking that I was still there.
Well, I was still here, and it would take a mountain to move me.
I wanted out. Out of this situation, out of this world. Inheriting a massive, fancy house had been nice. Finding out I could genuinely read the future had been a surprise. But this?
It was too much. Too much.
“We have to go after Dimitri,” Bridgette insisted, hands on her hips. “If he successfully manages to,” she gritted her teeth, “chop off the finger of one of our dead sisters, he’ll be able to use it to locate this place. We won’t be safe. No one will be safe,” she said as she cut her gaze towards me, her meaning clear.
Max stiffened, which was kind of surprising, considering he already looked as if someone had poured concrete down his mouth. “That doesn’t matter. This place is already compromised. We have to leave, go underground, wait. We need to buy ourselves another day.”
“You’re just assuming he has to kill by 7 PM,” Sarah objected. “It might just be a coincidence, and if we pin all of our hope on that,” she didn’t bother to finish that sentence. She shook her head.
I just watched, occasionally taking sips of my cocoa, but mostly drinking in its warmth. It was a distraction, but I needed something a heck of a lot more distracting to pull my mind off Fagan, off Dimitri, off that freshly dug grave.
It wasn’t just fear billowing and shifting through my gut like a storm cloud. It was anger now, too. Anger in the face of certain defeat, but anger nonetheless.
How dare those assholes kill indiscriminately. How dare they do what they want. And how dare they get away with it unchecked.
Though the anger made my blood boil, though the anger chased away the fear – it couldn’t last.
Max broke away from Bridgette and Sarah and took several steps towards me. “If we can’t agree, then we have to split up. I’ll take Chi and keep her safe.”
Bridgette snorted. “And how exactly are you going to do that, fairy? That’ll split up our forces. That will make us easier targets. Our only option is to stick together and fight together,” she said passionately.
“Bridgette is right, Max. You can’t leave us now.”
Us, or her?
Again I wondered exactly what kind of relationship these two had. I was hardly in the mood to ask, though, and nor did I want to split Max’s attention. Though my mind was still suspicious of him – though my mind kept reminding me of what Fagan had said – my heart could not be argued with. I had to stick with him. It would be my only chance of living through this.
Max wouldn’t budge. “You’re overestimating Fagan’s reach. He won’t go after you. But you’re underestimating what he’ll do to get his hands on Chi,” Max’s voice dropped.
I looked up at him, looked up at him as a sickly frown cut across my lips, looked up at him as I wondered whether I would retch. I held onto the contents of my stomach, though, and pushed up from the chair.
Maybe Max was right, and the best thing to do was to run. We could stay on the road, keep away from Fagan until we bought ourselves a chance.
I shook my head. Or at least something shook my head. I heard that voice again – quite possibly the long subdued voice of my conscience.
I had an obligation. Whether I liked it or not, these witches had helped me, and I had to help them in return. Fagan wasn’t just after me. Yes, I was his next intended target, but the Lonely King would demand more sacrifices. He would need more hearts for whatever devious purpose he had in mind.
Maybe he wouldn’t go after the witches directly, and maybe he wouldn’t murder any of them in the next two hours. But I didn’t put it past him to capture some and keep them for tomorrow.
Or heck, maybe Max was wrong – and Fagan didn’t have to murder on the hour every 24 hours. Maybe he just had a flair for the dramatic.
As I shook my head, Max frowned. “It’s the only way, Chi. We need to head underground. And we need to go now.” Though I could tell he didn’t want me to see, he quickly glanced at the clock on the wall. I made no attempt to hide my move as I turned and glanced at it, too.
Half an hour. I had half an hour until I succumbed to Fagan’s blade.
That thought could have easily crushed my world, sent my thoughts spinning into freefall until I blacked out entirely.
I held on, though. I took a breath. “Max, they’re right. We shouldn’t split up. I may be able to help them,” I added, weakly, realizing that in my current state I couldn’t even help myself.
Max offered me the strangest half frown. “Now is not the time for growing a conscience,” he muttered quietly under his breath.
Sarah Anne walked up behind him, hesitated, then reached out, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Max stiffened, and I couldn’t tell whether it was out of surprise from her sudden move, or something else.
“Please, Max, we need your help. And you need ours. You can’t be everywhere at once. And you… if you use your powers, you may start to forget,” she said softly.
I’d seen Max stiffen before. His pronounced muscles seemed uniquely attuned to seizing up like coiled springs. At yet it was nothing compared to what happened now.
Before Max could say anything, or jerk away and stalk off, Sarah took a soft breath. “We need each other. It’s the only way to buffet the consequences of our magics. You forget, Bridgette splits, and I can’t age. Together, with the help of the coven, we can watch each other’s back. Apart? This fight will kill us.”
Max wouldn’t answer.
So Sarah sighed. “If you do go to ground, you’ll just make it easier for Fagan to find you. He has spies everywhere.”
“Then I’ll hide in the open. Barricade myself in. All I need is,” he ticked his eyes towards the clock, “32 minutes. I buy myself that, I buy myself a day.”
Bridgette swore. “You’re not listening. You’re not thinking, either. Fagan is gonna have friends. He will also have enemies, idiot. I don’t know who he’s collecting these hearts for, but they have to be a kingpin. I’m sure this dark country is just full of magical assholes who would like to curry that kingpin’s favor. If they think they can snatch Chi’s heart in Fagan’s place, they will. You can’t risk going underground, and you sure as hell can’t risk barricading yourself in – you just don’t know how much you’re up against. So we only have one option,” she concluded.
Max’s eyes narrowed. “And what would that be?” he asked, for some reason his Scottish accent becoming thicker than usual.
“We attack first,” Bridgette said, gaze unflin
ching as she stared hard into Max’s eyes.
He stared right back. “Trust me, that’s suicide.”
“It’s better than waiting around and doing nothing or walking into one of his traps. We need to find Dimitri, stop him, capture him, and use him to get to Fagan. You said it yourself,” she switched her attention to me, “Dimitri is the one to catch you. If we capture him, then you’ll be safe.”
Max growled, obviously not liking that logic. And, to be honest, I didn’t like it, either. Yes, in the vision Fagan had revealed that Dimitri had captured me, but that didn’t mean that if Dimitri was taken out of the equation, Fagan wouldn’t find some other way to get his hands on me. Plus, wasn’t I forgetting something? Wasn’t I still pushing away some rather uncomfortable truth?
Max was meant to betray me. Max was meant to be the reason Dimitri finally got his hands on me.
As that thought rose, I shook my head and thrust it away. I took an uneasy step towards them. “I’ll be honest – I don’t know what the best thing to do is. But Bridgette’s right – we have to do something. We can’t just sit here,” I said, but I stopped abruptly as I realized what I was saying. Apart from my confusing abilities to see the future, I didn’t have any magic of my own. Nor had I ever been in a real fight. I’d fought to survive, yes, but that was different. I’d never attacked anyone. And that’s what Bridgette was suggesting we do.
Max watched me. Hell, Dimitri could have popped up behind him and tried to sock the Scotsman on the jaw, but I doubted Max would have turned.
“This won’t be easy, Chi,” he muttered.
Brigitte practically snapped up beside him as she obviously realized that he was softening to her plan. “No, but it’s the only option we have.”
When Max didn’t whirl on his foot and continue arguing, Brigitte switched her attention to me. In fact, as I gulped and looked around the room, I realized all attention was on me.
Ordinarily, I didn’t mind being under the spotlight. I was used to a basic amount of attention – either welcome or unwelcome – as a fortuneteller. Set your booth up at the wrong market, and people would either insult you or grovel at your feet.
A Lying Witch Book Two Page 11
