Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
Oh, No She Didn’t!
Trying hard for that separation Dad spoke of, I felt my finger lifting from the photo as I pulled myself out of the vision.
Mom was there. “Darling, you’re bleeding.”
The old woman—Imogen—tried to hand me a napkin, but I held my hand up and quickly put my glove back on. Mom’s fingers twitched and the blood I felt dripping down my lip was gone.
“Are you okay?” Mom looked worried.
The pearl was touching my skin and I felt it drawing away the pain, so I nodded. “I’m okay.”
Mr. Howe looked horrified. I gestured for him to move to the side with me, so I could talk to him without an audience. As I explained to him what I saw, his face lost all color.
Imogen and Lydia stood, not knowing what was being said but seeing his reaction.
“What do I—” He pulled out his phone and stared at it.
I touched his sleeve, regaining his attention. “Don’t call,” I murmured. “You go to her and get her back from him.”
“Yes.” He nodded robotically. “Yes.” He glanced to the right, saw the Panel staring at him, and jolted out of his shock. “She’s a Cassandra. I have to go. Lydia, please take over for me.” He ran out of the room and a moment later, we heard an engine rev and tires squeal.
“What did you see?” Imogen asked me.
Shaking my head, I walked back to our designated interrogation spot, Mom beside me. “That’s no one’s business but Malcolm’s.”
Imogen narrowed her eyes at me. “How did you know his name?”
I grinned. “How do I know anything, Imogen? I just do.” I glanced at a seething Catherine and added, “So, no. I’m not a sorcerer. I’m a Cassandra wicche, one who, because of my mother and grandmother, made it to adulthood.”
Mom sat down.
This part was up to me. I turned to Lydia. “Do you have a projection system here?”
She shook her head. “We don’t.”
“That’s okay.” I reached over for my backpack and Mom handed it to me. “I have my own, if you’ll give me a minute. I have information I’d like to share with the Council.”
Catherine looked ready to jump down my throat, but the other three nodded.
There was a tall two-top table pushed against a wall, holding a tray with water glasses on it.
I put the tray on the floor, then carried the table back to my spot.
Moving quickly and efficiently, I got the laptop and projector set up and projecting on the white wall opposite me.
I tapped on the folder holding all the images and videos of Swans, then turned back to the Panel. “Unlike my accuser, I have evidence of the Swans dealing in black magic.”
Catherine shot out of her seat and threw a curse at Faith, who she no doubt saw as the weakest of us.
We all moved at the same time. Mom lunged in front of Faith, ready to take the hit.
Bracken held out his hand to catch it. I’d had the same idea and was closer to Catherine, so I snatched her curse out of the air and felt it burn my hand.
I held the scream in, glaring at Catherine.
Bracken was suddenly beside me with my octopus bottle, pouring the seawater over my burned hand.
I heard a ruckus and turned to see Mom stalking toward Catherine, the fingers of both hands going.
Catherine was shoved back into her seat, and the chair flew ten feet across the wooden floor, so it slammed against the wall, Catherine’s head bashing into it as well.
Mom had spelled Catherine’s mouth shut and kept her pinned to her chair.
The ground beneath us began to rumble with an earthquake. Bracken quickly sat down and put his arm around Faith, whispering that everything was going to be okay.
Mom, though, was too far gone to recognize that the quaking was caused by our very upset elemental.
“Do you have any idea what I did to the man who stole her when she was three?” she ground out as she moved toward Catherine.
“Who tried to assault my baby? There is nothing, you weak, petty old bitch, I wouldn’t do to protect mine. ”
My hand was a bloody, blistered, blackened mess, but I moved quickly to Mom. We didn’t need her committing a murder with thirty witnesses taking notes.
She looked down at my hand. “Show me.”
I opened it, flinching at the sudden pain.
“Darling,” she crooned. She looked up at all the people watching us. “Is there a healer in here?”
“I’m sorry, no,” Lydia said. “My daughter is a healer, but she’s not with us today.”
“It’s okay, Mom. It looks better than it did a minute ago. Give it some time.”
Mom shook her head, looking suddenly exhausted. “Let’s go. This was a stupid idea.”
“No, it wasn’t.” I nudged her toward her chair.
“And I still have a presentation to give.” I tapped on the first video.
“This is surveillance taken from my art gallery. Catherine’s grandson Milo was on the crew who were packing up my artwork to ship to a buyer.
Midday, I made cookies for the crew. Everyone had gone out onto my deck to take a break, but here is Milo hanging back.
See, he’s pulling something out of his pocket that he shakes onto food in the display case and into a jar of tea on the counter. ”
I paused the video after he strolled out onto the deck.
“I walked by the cabinet later that day and my stomach seized. I touched one of the poisoned cookies and saw the little boy who was going to eat it and die. I also saw Catherine giving her grandson the poison. They had been working with my sorcerer cousin, Calliope.”
They were listening. I could see it on their faces.
“I sometimes help on difficult police cases, so I know two detectives. I called and they came, took the food and tea leaves, confirming the presence of poison. Milo was taken into custody, but Catherine seems to have influenced a judge to let him out on a reduced bail.”
I clicked on the next file. “This, we believe, is Milena. Milo was still in jail when this happened. You can see she’s holding the curse in one hand while the fingers of her other are working a spell. It didn’t work. She couldn’t break my wards.”
The wicches in the room were staring intently at the screen.
I clicked the next and the next, going over her attack on my new home, the curse left at our fence, the attack on Faith’s house, the dead birds left around my property, ending with Uncle John’s footage.
“A man was killed. Countless animals were tortured and killed so they could make weak curses.” I glared at Catherine, who looked like she’d kill me where I stood, if she could.
“You lap at the boots of evil to try to steal a power that isn’t yours.
And this is what you do with it? It’s one piss-poor, incompetent attempt after the next, and all for what? You’ve hurt, maimed, killed for what?”
“This isn’t proof,” Catherine’s friend said. “You could have altered the images.”
I was happy to see how many people were staring at her incredulously.
“Look at her! She has an unmarked aura,” her friend said.
“I’m glad you brought that up. There’s an ancient demonic spell that can clean a sorcerer’s soul.
I just received a message from a friend.
Again, if you go to The Slaughtered Lamb, you know Dave.
He was able to track down the spell and how to counteract it.
This is my first time trying it, so we’ll see if I get it right.
” I checked the text again and flicked my fingers at Catherine, whose eyes looked like they were going to pop out of her head.
Her aura turned to soot. The wicches gasped, some standing and moving to the far end of the room.
My phone buzzed in my hand. It was the text I’d been waiting for.
I held up the phone to Catherine. “The police got a warrant and raided that little basement room under your porch.”
Catherine was visibly shaking.
“Did I forget to mention that I had a vision about you and your grandchildren? The man in the brown plaid shirt that you tortured to fuel your spell? The arm you cut off and left in the woods? So much evidence down there that the police are now processing. Oh, and there’s a warrant for you too.”
Mom stood again, waving a hand in Catherine’s direction. Her head dropped onto her shoulder. She was out. “We can’t have her listening to us plan. We need to get her out of here. We don’t want to pull the police into a Council meeting.”
“We only need to get her off the property, though, right?” I was closing down my laptop and stowing everything in my backpack.
“It’ll take them two hours to get here,” Faith said.
I shook my head. “They’ll probably ask the local police to pick her up and hold her for them.” I looked at Bracken. “Which means we need to move her before I call the detectives and get this ball rolling.”
“We can put her in her car up on the road,” he said.
“What if she drives away?” the older woman closest to us asked. The group now seemed to be behind having her arrested and hiding her connection to the rest of them.
Bracken was standing as well. “Whoever owns this lovely restaurant, do you have a bottle of alcohol we can have? We’ll crash her car into a tree, splash around some alcohol, and leave her to be picked up by the cops.”
A woman stood and hustled out of the room. I looked at the door she’d gone through, then over at Lydia.
“She owns the restaurant,” she said. “I think she went for the bottle Bracken asked for.”
“We need her keys.” I went to the Panel table. “Where’s her bag?”
“She leaves it in her car,” Imogen said. “She carries her keys in her pocket.”
I felt something dark and angry to my right. Catherine’s friend was frantically texting. I held out my hand and her phone flew out of hers and into my bad one. I flinched so hard, I almost dropped it. “Damn it! I keep forgetting that hand is fucked-up.”
“Language, Arwyn,” Mom hissed, causing a few people to chuckle.
“Sorry.” I deleted the long text the woman—Miranda—was writing and wiped the phone of all information, effectively killing it. “Remember, Miranda, snitches get stitches.”
Only a few looked scared at that. Most laughed at my threat.
“What about fingerprints?” Faith asked. “If you and Bracken put her in her car and drive it somewhere, you’ll get prints on it. And if you spell them off, then she has a suspiciously clean car.”
Mom stared at her niece a moment.
Faith shrugged. “I watch a lot of true crime documentaries.”
“Hey, me too,” I told her. “Have you watched that roommates one?”
“Yes,” Faith said, standing up and grabbing my arm. “Can you imagine living with that one guy?” She shivered. “He gave me nightmares.”
A woman in the group said, “That one really freaked me out too. Did you watch the Nightstalker one?”
Faith squeaked and hid her eyes behind her hands. “I couldn’t sleep. My mom made me promise to stop watching them.”
Mom held up a hand. “Perhaps we could table this discussion for later?” She pointed at Catherine. “We need to get her out of here and into police custody.”
“Right, right. Sorry.” I nudged Faith with my elbow. “We’ll talk later.”
I held up my gloves and wiggled my fingers. “Prints aren’t an issue for me, but I see your point.” I turned to Bracken. “You and I could move that car.”
He considered, then nodded, patting Faith on the shoulder. “We won’t need to get in it and drive. We’ll relocate the car.”
The eyes of the people around us widened at that. The woman who’d left earlier returned with a bottle of vodka she held with a dishtowel.
“Okay, come on, Catherine.” I flicked my fingers and she was floating, still unconscious, toward us.
There were a couple of gasps, but most seemed totally into helping us ditch a body.
The woman handed me the bottle and said, “I can show you where her car is parked.”
“Perfect. Thank you.” I paused and speared Miranda with a look. “I mean it. Don’t fuck with us.”
“Arwyn.”
“Sorry, Mom.” I gave Miranda one last dirty look, though.
Mom grabbed my backpack for me and wrapped an arm around Faith. She wasn’t letting anything happen to her niece. “Your parents are going to be so angry with me,” she was muttering. “I promised them nothing would happen to you.”
“And nothing did, Aunt Sybil. I’m fine.”
Catherine floated in between Mom and Faith and Bracken and me. As we left the dining room, I realized everyone was following.
I nudged Bracken. “We’re going to have an audience for this.”
He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. “Then we better make it good.”