Witch Way Out (Witch Detectives #3) (20 page)

I raised a single warning finger. “Trust me, you don’t want to get into a fight with me. Now, is Elizabeth McCallum here? I’d like to speak with her. Well, I’d like to accuse her of plotting mass murder, but it’s more or less the same thing.”

I let that ring out, and half the witches around me stopped out of sheer curiosity. Good.
Let them see. Let them hear.
Better yet, let them ask questions about the one member of the coven no one ever seemed to notice. For years, Elizabeth had slid along under the radar, never seeming very threatening, always trying to be everyone’s friend. It had allowed her to pursue her own agenda. It had allowed her to get away with murdering my mother.

She came down the stairs from one of the upper levels, looking as calm and collected as ever. She stopped a little in front of me, looking around at me, Niall, the doors…

“That’s quite an entrance, Elle.”

“I just wanted to be sure that I got your attention. You killed my mother.”

She was able to produce a pretty good impression of shock, I’d give her that. Her eyes widened and her hand went to her mouth in what looked like horror at the accusation.

“Elle, how can you think that I—”

“There’s no point in denying it. I’ve spoken to Nea. Incidentally, she failed to murder Siobhan.” I caught the brief flicker of annoyance there. “What’s wrong? Don’t you like it when things don’t work out the way you planned?”

Elizabeth shook her head, reaching out toward me. “I don’t know what lies people have been telling you, but I had nothing to do with Annette’s death. As I understand it, she was killed by the monster, Victoria.”

“And who gave her up?” I asked. “Who was close enough to her to whisper in her ear and suggest that it was a good time to go down into the dark to parlay with the goblins? Who used her little goblin contact to let Victoria know exactly where she would be going?”

“You really think…that’s a very serious accusation, Elle.” Her face went from apparent disbelief to hurt pride in an instant. She had to know that I could feel the real emotions beneath. That this little act wasn’t doing any good. Of course, I probably wasn’t the intended audience. This was about the witches surrounding us, staring over from their books and trying to take in what was happening.

“There are other accusations to go with it,” I assured Elizabeth.

“Such as?”

“You’ve been manipulating me since you got here. You tried to distract me with investigations so that I wouldn’t look too hard at my mother’s death, or at the buildup of tensions with the goblins. You tried to control me with the promise of reconnecting with the coven.”

Elizabeth stepped over to the librarian’s desk, sitting on the edge of it. “Is that why Rebecca is here? She is the one who told you this?”

“Elle worked it out for herself,” Rebecca assured her. “Then she had to stop her boyfriend from killing me. You put me in danger.”

“I am sorry that you were in danger, but it does not sound like I was the one who put you there, does it?” I’d forgotten how good Elizabeth was at being reasonable. Good enough that for years, she’d been a voice of stability in my life. “It sounds to me like it was the vampire’s choice to attack you. And yet you’re standing beside them.”

Rebecca put her hands on her hips. “I wanted to hear what you have to say. I still do.”

“Well, I say that all of those things were necessary to maintain the peace.” Elizabeth flashed a smile my way. “I’m sorry, Elle, but you
are
rather a destabilizing influence. The situation with the goblins has been…
delicate
. We couldn’t have you wandering around away from coven authority, or in the wrong places.”

“So, when it was clear I wasn’t going to stop, you had me wander around in all the
right
places?” I looked around the room. The witches there were getting restless. I could feel it. Niall obviously could, too, because he moved around slightly to block anyone from coming at me.

“Define the right places,” Elizabeth shot back.

“You told Rebecca to point me at evidence pointing to the goblins,” I said. “You had people follow Siobhan, making it look like goblins were after her.”

“I would rather have you on our side than theirs,” Elizabeth said. “And did it not occur to you that if we were able to capture the goblin girl and put her back underground, it would save a lot of trouble when it comes to that prophecy of theirs?”

I nodded. “You’re all about stopping trouble, aren’t you, Elizabeth? Wanting to keep things as normal as possible? It’s why you proposed a deal with me. Tell me, is it also why you want a war with the goblins? Is it why you had their leader murdered like you did my mother?”

Elizabeth’s eyes turned hard for the first time since I’d gotten there. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Elle. Someone has been feeding you lies.”

“And that someone is
you
,” I insisted. “A witch was behind the incident at the archaeological dig. They had to be, to manipulate the earth-moving machinery through magic. Yet, it was blamed on goblins, and a young witch was hurt. I thought that was a coincidence, but it wasn’t, was it? It was meant to be an excuse. A sign that the goblins were going too far.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “They
have
been going too far. I understand that there have been numerous incidents in the city.”

“And how many did you choreograph?” I asked. I was right, I knew I was. “You stoked the tensions everywhere you could.”

“Why would I do that?” Elizabeth asked. “You have said yourself that my interest is in peace.”

“I said that you were interested in maintaining things as they are. That isn’t the same thing. You’ve been working for years to stop the goblins from coming to the surface. You can’t let it happen, but you weren’t able to stop it either, because their leader was patient. He thought things through. He worked slowly, rather than rushing up to the surface. By killing him, you’ve forced a war you know the goblins can’t win.”

Elizabeth shrugged. She didn’t deny it. She just…shrugged.

“And now what, Elle?” she asked. “You’ve made your accusations. Accusations for which there is not a shred of evidence, beyond perhaps the words of goblins and vampires. Yet, what do you really hope to achieve here?”

I swallowed.

“I want you to confess,” I said at last. “I’m going to give you one chance. You can confess and face the coven’s justice, or you can face mine.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “If it will make you feel better, then, of course, I will confess. I will confess to all the people here that I did everything that was necessary. I have pushed forward our conflict with the goblins, because I want it to occur at a point when witches can still
win
.” She looked around the room. “Is there anyone here who truly disagrees with me? Is there anyone who will stand up and say that we should wait until the surface is overrun by monsters? Will
you
say that, Rebecca?”

She fixed Rebecca with an even stare. Rebecca looked away.

“I follow the interests of the coven,” Rebecca said.

I screamed inside. I’d just saved her
life
and this was how Rebecca repaid me? Of course, I wouldn’t have had to if Niall hadn’t been trying to kill her, but still…

“I know you do. We all do. And not just the coven. This is even in the interests of the goblins.” Elizabeth looked over to me. “Or did you think Nea was working with me for no reason? If we can stop the war here, we only have to kill the worst of them. If we leave it…sometimes, we must cut off a limb to avoid poisoning the whole body.”

“And my mother?”

Elizabeth looked around the room, obviously aware of the opinions that really mattered. “Annette Chambers was planning to betray us all. She wanted to bring the goblins back up among us. She wanted to give them back the weapons of magic that we had so carefully taken from them. The coven could not permit that.”

This wasn’t going the way I wanted, but at least she’d said it now. There were witnesses to what she’d done. I started forward…

A blast of magic from Elizabeth sent me diving for cover. Niall tried to flank her, but she said a word and books flew from the nearby shelves, blasting past him as though they’d been shot out of a cannon.

“I tried my best to keep you out of this, Elle.” Elizabeth opened her hands, and it seemed like fog poured from them. Thick fog, cloying and magical. In just seconds, I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of my face. “I did everything I could to keep you safe for Annette’s sake. And for yours. I’ve always considered you a friend.”

“The feeling isn’t mutual,” I snapped, and I ran in the direction of her voice. I thought I saw a shape in the mist and I threw myself at it. The shape dissolved into fog though, and I only succeeded in crashing into the librarian’s desk.

“You really should have taken the offer we made.”

The words seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. I picked a direction at random and set off in it. I barely ducked in time as a blast of energy flashed out of the mist. I ran in the direction it had come from, but only succeeded in running into a bookcase. I roared in frustration.

“Listen to her. All the time we spent trying to make something better of her, and she is so easily reduced to just an animal. What happened to you, Elle?”

“Niall?” I yelled into the mist. “Where are you?”

“Over here,” Niall called back, but again the mist seemed to twist things, so that the sound could have come from anywhere. Objectively, I knew he couldn’t be more than a few yards away, but it sounded like he was at the other end of a large hall. He didn’t feel that way, though. I could feel the thrum of his emotions near to me, and that gave me an idea.

“Ah,
he’s
the problem.” Elizabeth’s voice seemed to come from right next to me for a moment. I spun, but she wasn’t there. “Would it help if we just got rid of him, do you think?”

 “I’ll kill you,” I promised.

Elizabeth sighed, and a flash of energy slammed into my leg, making me scream as I fell to my knees.

“I see I let things get too far. We all did. I’m sorry, Elle.”

“You will be.” I didn’t dare close my eyes, because another of those flashes of energy could come at any moment. Even so, I reached down deep into myself, trying to pinpoint the emotions I could feel around me. I turned slowly, trying to find an emotional signature I’d known so well as a child. One who had always been around, near my mother, giving advice.

There.

As I pinpointed Elizabeth’s location, it seemed that the mist fell away. I could see the Archive. I could see Niall stumbling around. I could see the witches and warlocks watching us. I could see Rebecca standing off to one side. And I could see Elizabeth. I threw myself forward, knowing that if I could only get a grip on her I would be strong and fast enough to end this.

If my leg hadn’t been so recently hurt, it might even have worked. With my powers, I healed fast, but not that fast. Instead, I stumbled, and the stumble was enough. Elizabeth gestured, and it felt like the roof had fallen on me. The air around me thickened until it was heavier than stone, sheer gravity pushing me down to my knees.

Elizabeth stepped forward, shaking her head. “I’m disappointed in you, Elle. You can’t seriously believe that you can just barge into the Archive, threaten a senior coven witch and have that end well.”

“So,” I said, “what now? Are you going to kill me in front of everyone?”

Elizabeth spread her hands. “What other choice have you given me? You’ve shown us all exactly how dangerous you are. You’re a threat to all of us in this city. You need to go, both of you.”

I looked around at the watching witches. They stared back at me like I was nothing but a monster, but then, what did I expect? Even Rebecca stood back, her fists clenched tightly and her eyes half closed with the strain of the situation, but she still wouldn’t look at me.

 Elizabeth touched my jaw lightly. “There’s no point in looking at her. She does what the coven needs. Why do you think I asked her to watch you all those years ago? I’m sorry, Elle. I truly am. I always liked you as a girl. I even like you now. So strong. So independent. If I thought for one moment that I could let you go and you wouldn’t immediately try to hunt me down…But I do what is necessary. I
always
do what is necessary.”

“Like you did with my mother?” I said.

“Exactly. I’m sorry.” She stepped back, raising her hands for what I knew would be the spell that ended me. I was powerful, but without a large source of emotion to work with, I simply wasn’t as strong as her. All I could do was look up at her as she started the words to the spell. Behind me, I could feel Niall’s anguish and grief, held just as still as I was, unable to help.

I thought about him and what my life would have been like if I’d never met him. Elizabeth was right in one way: things would have been simpler for all of us. I certainly wouldn’t have been as much of a danger to the coven. But equally, I would never have been able to stop the threat from Victoria when she decided to bring up the goblins from their tunnels. I would never have found out just how my mother died.

And I would never have had all those small moments with Niall. I would never have found myself waking up next to him. I would never have stood with him in the middle of a crowd, just feeling the joy of it running through us. I would never have learned what his lips tasted like, or how they felt as they brushed against my skin.

I looked up into Elizabeth’s eyes and I knew it was worth it.

Then I saw something freeze in those eyes. She gave the faintest of gasps, her eyes widening. Then she crumpled, first to her knees, and then to fall against me. Behind her, I saw Rebecca standing there, the energy of her killing spell still crackling in her hands. She looked down at Elizabeth as the older witch died.

“I serve the coven, but Annette was my
friend
.” As Elizabeth’s spell on me faded, Rebecca held out a hand. “And so is her daughter.”