Witch Way Out (Witch Detectives #3) (9 page)

I swallowed before I answered. “Yes.”

“We are trying to do the right thing, too.” The goblin looked around the table. Not looking for permission from the others, but obviously seeking to include them. “The three of us are part of a movement in the goblin world. One that has been gathering momentum for some time now. One that was hijacked by the enchantress you defeated.”

I thought for a moment, and I almost stood up to leave when I worked out what they meant. “Wait a minute. You’re talking about goblins coming up to reclaim the surface?”

“That is the way Victoria saw it,” the female goblin, Nea, said. “We don’t.”

“We are interested in a better life for our people,” Ulm explained. “And yes, that better life includes being able to come up into the sun. Perhaps in secret at first, but then, eventually, openly.”

“Why not come out openly now?” Kal asked.

Nea shook her head. “Kal, we’ve
had
that argument.”

“And we should not be having it again in front of Ms. Chambers,” Ulm put in. He smiled over at me. “I know that what I have just said must come as a shock. Please remember that I am not talking about us pouring out of the tunnels tomorrow, or the day after, or a year from now. This is a dream for us, and we have learned to be patient.”

I couldn’t help looking at Kal. “Some of you have, at least.”

I hadn’t expected this when I’d agreed to come here. I hadn’t known what to expect. There were still things I didn’t understand.

“Why tell me this?” I asked. “After I stopped Victoria, why come out and tell me something like this?” I held up my hands to forestall the obvious objection. “I know. I know you say that you’re not planning the same things she was, but you have to realize that I’d be suspicious.”

“Of course, you would,” Ulm said. “And that is one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you. If you had heard this from one of the coven, or found it out by chance, wouldn’t you have been more suspicious?”

“And my opinion matters to you that much?” That seemed hard to believe. Whatever else was true, I was just one insurance claims investigator in a large city.

“You are a power in this city.” The goblin spread his hands. “More powerful than perhaps you give yourself credit for. Your opinion matters, although I will admit that there are a couple of other reasons that I wanted to talk to you.”

Of course there were. Nothing around my life was ever likely to be simple.

“What are the reasons?”

“First, there is the question of your mother.”

This time, I did stand up. “What about my mother?”

“Sit down, and I will tell you.”

I wanted to make him tell me regardless, but I doubted that would go down well. I sat back down instead. “You have one minute to get my attention.”

“I won’t need it,” Ulm assured me. “I spoke to your mother on a number of occasions. She was interested in the plight of my people, locked away, almost prisoners. She wanted to find ways to help us, although we argued over the details.”

He said it like it was no big deal that my mother had been Underneath to see him. Like it was no big deal that one of the most respected witches in the coven had been talking to a goblin who seemed determined to bring his people back to the surface.

“She didn’t want you to come out into the open?” I guessed.

“She perhaps felt it would be too difficult to achieve, that her coven was not ready to permit it. I pointed out to her that freedom should not be something that has to be permitted. Although, in truth, that was always a general point. The real sticking point came when I asked her to teach my people more about magic.”

My breath caught slightly as he said that. Some goblins, some supernatural creatures of every stripe, had always had access to a little natural magic, more innate powers than anything. Yet, never more than that. The superiority of witches was almost entirely down to that fact. A fact they worked hard to maintain. Just look at how they’d reacted to me.

“It is not something you need to worry about now,” Ulm said. “I know it is a lot to take in. I merely wished to meet with you and work out where you stood. Not even that. I wanted to see what kind of person you were. There are wheels in motion, Elle, and I wished to make sure that you were not one of them.”

“And
am
I?”

He shrugged. “It is hard to be certain of anything these days.”

“Okay, what’s the second reason?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You said there were two reasons you wanted to see me. You’ve told me about my mother, so what’s the other one?”

Nea answered that one. “We wanted to make sure that Siobhan was okay.”

That seemed to come too soon after we’d been followed to be a coincidence. “You’ve been following us?” I drew power around me. “I’m warning you, if you try to hurt her—”

“Why would we want to hurt her?” Nea asked. “Like Ulm said, we’re from the same clan. And that child she’s carrying is—” She stopped as Ulm looked at her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know we weren’t supposed to say it. I thought she must know. Surely Siobhan would have heard it?”

Ulm sighed. “It’s done now. Ms. Chambers, we would never hurt the girl. We would never risk the child she is carrying. Not now that she is living in the up-world.”

That didn’t seem very likely. “Are you telling me that there’s some kind of hands-off policy on goblins living up here? Because Dougie spent plenty of time up here and look what happened to him.”

Ulm looked at me blankly. “Dougie?”

Nea said something that sounded more like she was gargling with gravel.

“Him, yes. No, it is not like that, Ms. Chambers. The child the girl is carrying…there are those who believe it will be special.”

“One born in light will lead us to light.” Kal’s voice was almost singsong as he said it. “It’s true. We all know it.”

“You might,” Nea said.

Ulm held up his hand again. “The important thing is that enough people take it seriously that the girl would not be harmed. We want her safe, Ms. Chambers. Safe and above ground, of course. Thank you for that.”

He and the others stood, making as if to leave.

“Wait,” I said. “That’s it? You’re leaving? You invited me over to a secret meeting just to get a good look at me, ask about my mother and then drop some cryptic nonsense on me about Siobhan?”

“There are those who would say that is enough,” Ulm replied. He paused for a moment. “There are those who make the mistake of assuming that goblins are everything the tales say. That we do not think. I can assure you, that isn’t the case. We think.
I
think.” His smile showed the tusks sticking from his mouth. “You have given me a lot to think about, Ms. Chambers.”

I couldn’t believe that I was willingly heading back out toward a muddy field, yet that was exactly what I was doing at Rebecca’s request. She’d asked to meet me out at the dig site and, in the absence of any obvious way to refuse so as to preserve my clothes, I had to go. David wasn’t driving me in the Lexus this time, of course.

No, this time, Niall was giving me a ride over in the Aston Martin, having said something about getting lunch at this little restaurant he knew on the way back. Not that I was fooled by that. If Niall was coming all this way, there was no way it was just about the food. He was obviously worried about Rebecca calling me out into the middle of nowhere like this.

We pulled up by the dig. I had dressed for it in jeans, a flannel shirt and work boots. Niall still looked his usual elegant self. A part of me was faintly annoyed to see Rebecca already there, dressed more or less the same way I was. I’d been half hoping that she would continue with her usual power dressing, right up to the point where she fell over in the mud.

“Great,” she said as I got out of the car, “you’re finally here. And…Niall. You brought him, too?”

“He brought me.” I looked around. The archaeological dig seemed fairly quiet. “Why did you call me out here, Rebecca?”

She seemed to recover a little composure as she gestured to the dig. “What do you see out there, Elle?”

“Well, I guess there isn’t much going on…”

“There isn’t anything going on,” Rebecca insisted.

I guessed the rest of it rather easily. “You’re saying…”

“I’m saying that they’ve had to keep the dig shut down while they’re waiting for official word on what happened here. Their health and safety people won’t let them keep digging until they know for sure that something like this isn’t going to happen again.”

That was unfortunate, although shutdown was a standard practice when it came to industrial accidents. The dig leader, Professor Muir, had even warned me that he was going to have to shut down the trench. I hadn’t realized that they were going to have to shut down the whole site though.

“I know that’s not ideal,” I said.

Niall moved up next to me. “Although it does beg one question, Rebecca. Why do you care?”

“The insurers we work through are just in a hurry to get this done.”

I sighed. “Try it again with something a bit more plausible, Rebecca. We both know that the coven can keep its insurance connections on the hook as long as it needs to for me to finish the job.”

“But that’s just the thing, isn’t it?” Rebecca insisted. “You haven’t been finishing the job. I know we’ve got history, but I didn’t think that would make you unprofessional, Elle.”

“
Unprofessional
?” I’d been accused of a lot of things in my life, but never that. Was Rebecca trying to provoke me?

“What else do you want to call it when you’re not getting the job done? When you’re wandering off doing anything and everything else?”

I shook my head. I was ready right then to just get back into the Aston Martin and head back to Edinburgh.

“You don’t get to dictate what I do and when,” I insisted.

“I do when you aren’t doing what you’re meant to be doing,” Rebecca shot back. “Do you have any idea of the pressure I’m under right now? You’re out here and you’re not containing a situation that should be simple for you. Meanwhile, I’m in my office, and I’ve got flak coming my way from every direction. I’ve got this Professor Muir complaining to everyone who will listen about his precious site not being open. I’ve got three coven representatives wondering why I haven’t been able to finish such a simple job, not to mention asking why you’d rather go around talking to goblin separatists than help me.”

I stopped her with a look. “How do you know about that? How do
they
know about that?”

She shrugged. “You’d have to ask them. Which was embarrassing on a level you cannot begin to comprehend, Elle. This is meant to be my city, and they know better than I do what is going on in it?”

Niall coughed politely. “There are those who would say that this is not your city.”

“Are you making a claim now? Maybe putting one in on Elle’s behalf?”

Niall shook his head. “I would not do that. However, I do not feel that the city is exactly under your control either.”

Rebecca ignored that from Niall, turning back to me. “Why did you go see the goblins, Elle?”

I shrugged, thinking of telling her that it was none of her business, but that wouldn’t have helped matters. Instead, I told her the part that might potentially interest her.

“They said something about my mother talking to them. About her wanting to make things better for them. About her even talking to them about coming out into the open.”

“Them saying it doesn’t make it true,” Rebecca pointed out. She sighed. “That’s what this is about? You’re still trying to find more on Annette’s death?” She hesitated for a second or so, and I could feel the indecision in her. “Did you find anything useful? I’ve tried looking in the files, but with these three on my back constantly, I can’t find much.”

I shook my head. “That’s all they gave me.”

“Then you need to concentrate on this,” Rebecca insisted. “The delay is causing too many problems. I’ve got the girl who was injured so annoyed that she can’t get material for her degree that she’s alternating between threatening to tell the police everything and wanting to take all the blame if it will just get this done.”

“What?”

I’d talked to the girl in question, Nina, just a day or two ago. She’d been making a good recovery, and I’d discovered that she had a little magical talent, but she hadn’t seemed like she’d known anything. She’d seemed upset by the whole thing, but I hadn’t suspected she might do anything that stupid. I might have my problems with the coven, but even I didn’t want someone running to the police to tell them all about magic. Not the least because they would probably immediately drag her back in for more tests on the spot where she’d hit her head.

“I assume that you talked her out of both options?” Niall said.

“Of course, I did,” Rebecca snapped back. “I might not be able to control people the way you can, but I’m not completely useless. But she’s upset, and the longer this goes on, the worse things are going to get. I don’t want them getting to the stage where we have to do something drastic.”

I stared at Rebecca. “You’re talking about killing her?”