An Embittered Witch, page 12
‘No, I was scrying. Looking for Li Minh.’ She looked around the room nervously and whispered, even though her dome of silence must still have been in place. ‘Not just Cate is looking for Li Minh. The delegations believe Li Minh is the only one who can lead this country back to a balance of power.’ She sat back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. The story was over.
All that secrecy for this bit of information? ‘What’s the big deal, then? Why did you have all the dramatics and omm-ming? You’re looking to get in touch with this old witch, who did some bad things, saw the error of her ways, and now she’s needed to bring her country back to a middle ground. So what?’
‘It’s not that easy!’ She shot up in her chair. ‘You don’t understand. Li Minh is a touchy subject. The ruling party of China doesn’t want her found, and the Magicks find her too embarrassing to accept back into the fold. She made them lose face. Some witches would rather kill her than just let go of the whole thing. I might get killed, even looking for her!’
‘If it’s so dangerous, why did you agree to do it?’
‘Are you kidding? This is my ticket into the big leagues with the Kin!’
She sat back and added, in a more casual voice, ‘Oh, and now that you saw the vision, your life is in danger too.’
‘No way! I didn’t ask to get mixed up in this!’
‘But you did,’ she pointed out. ‘You purposefully followed me today into a magick cyst, you accepted the jade from the Empress – you’re already up to your eyeballs in everything. Your life is at stake now, just like mine and Li Minh’s.’
This was all crazy, and I told her so. I was present on this delegation only because Cate wanted to keep an eye on me. International espionage? Revolutionary insurgences? Death threats? No, I hadn’t signed up for that.
Yet she was adamant. ‘And what about Auld Meg? I’m afraid that she saw us both, even though it was a vision. I tell you, we need to keep this quiet.’
‘Okay, okay,’ I said finally. ‘I accept what you’re saying. It’s all crazy, but okay. The thing is, you say no one can know about all this?’
She nodded emphatically.
‘How about Cate? We going to tell her about the vision you had this afternoon?’
Win hesitated, and cast her eyes down. She hung her head for a moment, then looked up again at me and leaned forward as if to whisper.
We locked eyes, and I nodded slowly, imperceptibly. I thought, I really thought by this that Win understood that Cate was a baddie through and through. It was a relief to finally have someone who understood. The adamantite stud was itching in my ear, and I opened my mouth and was about to break down and confess my own experience with Cate, when we were interrupted by another’s voice in the room.
‘Yes, do tell Cate. Please.’
Twenty-One
Win and I both sat up as one, turning around to face our boss.
‘Cate!’ I pasted on a smile and grabbed for something to say, something to cover up what had just passed between Win and me. ‘We were just talking about you.’
Yes,’ she replied, her voice dry. ‘I heard.’
I didn’t dare risk a glance at Win, afraid I might reveal the guilt that lay between us.
‘By the way, Win, in future, remember to put lock spells on the door,’ she added. ‘Not that it would keep me away, of course, but anyone with a master swipe card could have done the trick. You two were so wrapped up, you didn’t even hear me enter. The white noise spell works both ways.’
She smiled genially. ‘Always be vigilant.’ Cate sat on the edge of the nearest bed, forcing us to swivel our armchairs toward her. ‘So tell me all about your afternoon. Any luck with the scrying?’
Win nodded, then shook her head. ‘We found Li Minh.’ She darted a glance over at me. ‘And Margaret Forsythe. Or at least a premonition of what will happen.’
Cate’s eyes widened a fraction and she pounced on this like a cat. ‘Do tell,’ she purred, leaning forward from her perch on the bed.
‘Looks like Margaret will get at Li Minh before us,’ Win continued bitterly. ‘Perhaps she already has.’
‘We don’t know that, just because she was there. It was the ghost of things to come, right? Not what has already happened.’ I half-heartedly burst out, but it was a feeble defense of the indefensible. I immediately wished I had kept quiet.
Win merely rolled her eyes.
‘So Margaret. Just as I thought.’ Cate narrowed her eyes while she looked at me as if she was calculating my loyalty to her.
I nodded slowly. ‘She was standing over Li Minh’s body.’
‘And where was this?’ Cate asked sharply.
‘I had a sense,’ Win said slowly. ‘It’s like a…. like a cave, but it’s not rough. More like an underground room, but the walls – I’ve never seen anything like this. As if they are made of small rocks all piled on top of each other. I saw Li Minh in the vision. She was alive and well enough, but sound asleep, just like the Great Zande and the Venerable Nachtan must be. I have no idea where she is.’
‘An underground room, like a cellar?’ Cate asked sharply. ‘Was she being held captive?’
Win shook her head. ‘No. But yes, but…’ She looked over at me.
‘Those rock walls weren’t a natural formation,’ I offered. ‘Some of the pieces were carved, animal heads, dragons even. And the Chinese lions. They were pretty fearsome and alive looking, even though they were obviously carved from stone.’
‘What kind of stone?’ Cate sat very still, her whole body tense. ‘Marble? That kind of white stone?’
Win and I looked at each other and nodded. ‘Maybe?’
Cate stared out the window past us to where the skies had imperceptibly turned dark gray with a red streak for the sunset, her long red nails tapping against her thigh. ‘A manmade structure of white marble rocks piled on each other, with carvings,’ she mused aloud. Then a small smile began at the corners of her mouth, but that was as much as she permitted. ‘Who would have thought?’
Her dark eyes were bright like a sparrow’s as she turned back and looked at both of us in turn. ‘This is a very interesting turn of events. You’re going to have to find her,’ she said finally. ‘Win, you now have Dara to help. Get to it. We need to find her, and fast.’
‘From what Win says, finding Li Minh is stirring the pot, and is going to make a lot of people angry,’ I pointed out. ‘I didn’t exactly sign up for this kind of danger.’
‘Yes, you did,’ Cate threw at me absently. ‘Read the contract you signed. It’s in the fine print.’
‘So. Margaret,’ I said to Cate, once we’d left Win’s room. I kept my voice low as we padded through the carpeted hallways.
‘Yes,’ Cate replied. ‘We need to lure her here before she can lay the curse on Li Minh. There’s a lot at stake here.’
‘Luring…? You mean setting a trap for her?’ My back was immediately up, although I understood the seriousness of the situation.
‘How else are we going to stop her?’ She pressed the button for the elevator. ‘You realize, it’s not just Li Minh, and the curses on Zande and Nachtan.’
The door opened silently. We stepped into the wood and mirrored space, Cate standing smack in the middle of the small floor. I moved over to the side.
‘It’s your future and life, too. Need I remind you?’ The door slid closed.
She needn’t. I was all too aware of the precariousness of my situation.
‘I think she’ll be keeping an eye on you, and that’s how we can get to her.’
‘I doubt it. She was pretty definite in her final good-bye that night by the Avalon Temple. You were there. You heard her.’
I didn’t bring up the airport meeting. The less Cate knew, the better.
She smiled enigmatically. ‘We’ll see.’
Good luck, I thought to myself. Good luck if you want to use me as the carrot to bring Margaret Forsythe to you. The abruptness of her last departure still stung, even after all this time.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ I said to Cate. I also didn’t tell her about my failed attempt to contact Margaret in Edinburgh.
That small smile remained on her face as the elevator brought us up to the heights of the hotel.
The door opened silently to let me out. Cate was staying on a higher floor, higher even than Hugh’s. She spoke her final words to me as I exited.
‘Just figure out how to bring her here. And soon. The Kin still want to put the finger on you, and I’m the one holding them off, remember,’ she said in the pause before the door glided shut again.
In other words, lure Margaret here or else.
There was no way to find Meg. The witch had ignored my last plea for help, and I felt sure there was nothing I could do or say to convince her to come here to China, to meet with Cate.
As difficult as it was for me to accept, after the vision we’d witnessed in the Temple, it looked like Margaret was the culprit, the one who had cursed both Zande and Nachtan. And now, it was going to happen to that mysterious figure Li Minh too, unless I could find a way to prevent that. Which brought me right back to the issue of Margaret ignoring any pleas from me.
I entered the room to find Hugh waiting for me. He surrounded me with his warm arms and I collapsed into them.
‘Where were you?’ he asked, then he held me out to examine my face. ‘You haven’t rested, have you?’
I shook my head.
‘You look ghastly. I’ll order some room service and you can have a good quiet evening. An early night is needed, I think, judging by your appearance.’
I let him take charge. I had no energy or fight left in me.
My first night in China, you’d think we would have had a fine selection of local delicacies, but instead Hugh ordered some solid, very British stew with fresh bread and I was thankful for this comforting familiarity. The accompanying red wine went straight to my head, yet my sozzled mind wouldn’t let go of the problem of how to conjure up the witch who wasn’t talking to me. And it wasn’t coming up with a solution.
Hugh was happy enough to carry on the one-sided conversation.
‘Poor Rob,’ he was saying when I finally tuned back into him. ‘So strange to run into him again. Here, at a Kin delegation of all places.’
My ears perked up. ‘But he’s Kin, isn’t he?’ Although Rob himself hadn’t been too sure of that in the bathroom cubicle of the airplane.
‘He was, to begin with,’ Hugh said as he buttered a slab of bread. He paused to take a bite, and mused as he chewed. ‘At least, he went to prep school with us. That’s where we met.’
He swished a sip of wine around his mouth and, once that was fully appreciated, took up the story again. ‘Of course, he was never much of a witch, truth be told.’
‘Not magic?’
‘Oh, it wasn’t that. He could hold his end with the best of us, but he never bothered with it much.’ Hugh looked over to the floor to ceiling window which looked over the teeming city. The endless stream of car headlights winked through the night. ‘He simply didn’t have the competitive edge which was required, had no get-up-and-go, as the Americans say.
‘It didn’t come altogether as a surprise to learn he’d dropped out of the firm, at least the business end of things. I’d heard he’d foresworn the Kin, gone off on some Mundane kick or something. Not quite stable, is my guess. Like I said, he was never that good a witch, anyway.’
Right at that moment, I could sympathize with Rob for choosing to leave the Kin behind. In my sleep deprived state, with Cate’s threat hanging over me, I would love nothing more than to be shot of the whole lot of them. With the exception of Hugh, I quickly told myself.
‘He’s a lawyer, of all things,’ Hugh said with a laugh and a shake of his head. ’When I think what he’s turned his back on, a man of his position, I shudder. The Kin is much better off without him.’
A lawyer. Rob had told me that. A lawyer, looking to discuss Margaret’s trust fund with her.
And suddenly, my whole mood brightened, for I had the answer to my problem. It had been there right before me all along.
What did Margaret cherish, more than anything? Her new life of lazing on sunny beaches, which was only possible through the trust fund her father had set up for her all those years ago. I had no doubt that the new message I had to send her would elicit a response. With Rob’s help, we’d get that witch.
Before she struck again.
Twenty-Two
I should have slept like a log that night to make up for the jetlag, but instead I found myself lying awake in a jangle of nerves, unable to stop the thoughts racing through my head. Beside me, Hugh slept like a man with a clear conscience.
Margaret was the one behind the curses laid on the great witches. Knowing Margaret as I did, it was hard for me to wrap my head around this fact. It made no sense, none of it. It just didn’t feel right.
Yet, on the other hand, it all made logical sense. I could accept Cate’s explanation that the witch must hold a terrible grudge against the Kin for locking her underground for more than a century. She had every right to be pissed at that, and for her to use her show of power against the most powerful magic practitioners of the globe, well, that was thumbing her nose at the whole of the Kin worldwide.
This was all very logical, in a warped sort of way.
But that logic didn’t explain why the pit of my stomach fell every time I thought of it, every time I remembered the vision of Margaret standing over Li Minh’s sleeping body, her face twisted in anger and her finger pointing directly at me. It was a terrifying sight, yet I kept going back to it, time and time again as if by doing so I could change the course of action.
I would try to contact her again, using Rob and his lawyerly worries as bait. The more I thought about this plan, the better I felt. Her trust fund was the only thing that mattered to her in her new life.
What I wasn’t clear on was my own motivation in reaching out to her. Was I doing it to stop her wreaking her revenge on the magic world, or was I doing it just to save my own ass?
I lay on my back and stared at the reflected city light on the ceiling. It would have been easier if I could have discussed it with someone I trusted, but there was no one. Win was the closest thing I had to a peer, but her opinion wouldn’t be unbiased. It would be too tied up with advancing her own position within the Kin.
Neither Mom nor Dad could give advice on this. It was way out of Dad’s league, and Mom was still star-struck over the fact I was engaged to marry a Duke’s heir.
Right, about that. Hugh. I sighed to myself, a deep one that came right from my core. I hadn’t been very honest with myself lately. Or with him either. And perhaps him with me.
It was hard to put my finger on, but the cord of attachment which had connected us had frayed somehow. I used to love that he was so upright. I admired his steadfastness, his adherence to the rules, his dedication to his work and the Kin.
And now? Those things were the very sources of friction between us. When we spoke, sometimes I could hear his impatience toward me while I, too, was beginning to hate his refusal to look at the gray shades of life. The Kin was everything to him, and his work was how he defined himself. He couldn’t even see Cate’s evilness. To him, she appeared as a cohort, one equally as dedicated to the good work done by the alliance of magic practitioners.
And Cate. I sighed again and rolled away from Hugh. Through the window I could see the dark glowing of lights from below, from a city that never slept. It would make total sense to tell her my plans to contact Margaret through the ruse of the trust fund.
Because, really, what did I plan to do when I had Meg in my grasp? Lasso her with a rope, magicked or not? Then turn her over to the Kin, saying here you go, that’s the culprit. It’s all up to you to make her drop the curses now.
Even if it were possible for me to overpower her, that didn’t guarantee the salvage of my reputation. She could easily point the finger at me, accuse me, and no one would know the difference.
Rob. My mind relaxed at the thought, and a small smile came to my face. He was strange. Nerdy. Rather gangly of body, as if he’d not yet come to terms with the growth spurt of his teens a decade past. How could I have ever mistaken him for a hireling of the Kin, him with his shabby clothing and messy hair?
And just as quickly, that smile was replaced by a frown. I was planning to use him to save my own butt. Pretending to do him a favor, yet only giving him enough to serve my own needs. Just like a frigging Kin would do.
Unless. Unless I didn’t turn Margaret over to the Kin. If I simply used the occasion to beg her to lift the curses, make her see sense, then she could let Rob tighten up the trust fund rules and toddle off back to her sunsets and beaches and margaritas, with not a worry in the world. And that would be the end to the whole thing.
Right?
And I could like myself again.
The actual work of the delegations turned out to be boring to the nth degree. Hugh was loving it, though, caught up in all the meetings and nuances and hammering out details like it was a big game. At breaks and mealtimes, when he remembered to come looking for me, he was full of the intrigues and gossip of the latest developments.
I didn’t seek him out much, though. All of that really wasn’t that interesting to me.
Cate, of course, was also caught up in the glamor of the politics, and often Win would accompany her because, well, Win loved it all too. For the week of the delegation and meetings, I was fairly free to go my own way, as my unofficial job was to make sure I lured Margaret in.
The sightseeing trips were another matter, and there were a few of them to relieve the dullness of business.
The second day of the conference, a trip to the Great Wall was scheduled, that huge structure stretching more than five hundred kilometers long. Cate insisted I travel on the luxurious bus with her so we could talk on the two-hour trip.
