An Enigmatic Witch, page 15
He nodded slowly, and was already decisively shaking his head when I opened my mouth again. ‘No, you can’t take part in it. Only the most trustworthy and powerful of witches are allowed to do this. Don’t take offence. It’s written in the Kin Constitution.’
I wasn’t offended, for Hugh had already explained it to me. But I had to test him. ‘Hugh can’t either?’
‘Correct. At this point in time.’
‘How about Cate?’
He’d resolutely returned his attention back to the newspaper, but shook his head again. ‘No, she’s expressly forbidden to take part.’
This took me aback. Cate was, in her own right, way up there in the Kin power hierarchy. What reason?
Perhaps he felt my eyes boring into him, for at long last he continued that thought. ‘She’s the head of the Huxor Kin,’ he explained, lifting his eyes to mine. ‘They control the adamantite extraction and production in this province. So she’s not allowed near the ley lines. It would be a potential clash of interests.’
‘And how does she feel about that?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s an accepted fact of life,’ he said. ‘She knows the rules, and she’s not the kind of witch to waste energy whining about it. I’m sure she prefers having control of the adamantite trade over being forced to partake in rather dull ceremonies all over the world. It involves a lot of travel, you know. It’s why I’m so often not around.’
So after supper I made sure he saw me set off to Brin’s on my bike in my quest to pump the elf for information. There was no hint of Alt on Blackler’s Lane that evening, I was very happy to note, because it meant the area was clear of Eldric and his Dark Elves. I was even happier to find Alice hanging out in the home, too, because that was the perfect excuse not to get too involved in a political discussion.
The atmosphere in the small house was charged, unsettled even though Alice didn’t appear to notice anything amiss. She chattered on in her way, yet Brin sat on the beat-up sofa in quiet agitation. He was restless, tense and unhappy. A picture of misery.
‘I’m getting ready for my trip,’ she announced. She was grinning from ear to ear with excitement.
‘What trip? You never go anywhere.’ I felt a flush of guilt at having neglected my best friend so much lately. Surely I should have known if she was planning to travel. I eyed Brin as he stared back at me as if he was trying to communicate something to me, but I had no idea what it could be.
‘My summer job,’ she said. ‘It’s part of the work for my thesis. We’re spending two weeks on Miquelon, studying seals on the beaches.’ She was flushed and evidently excited at the prospect of visiting the tiny French island to the south.
‘You and Brin are going?’ I asked, brightening. This could be very good. Brin would be removed from the political situation and I would no longer have to fear that he’d tell Dad anything. This was excellent news for me, and it solved the issue quite nicely. I hadn’t finished congratulating myself when she spoke up again.
‘Brin on the ocean?’ She guffawed out loud. ‘No, this trip is for biologists only.’
He opened his mouth, then shut it again as he darted a glance at Alice. She didn’t notice, but kept jawing on about the finer details of seals and their eating habits. Surely he wasn’t upset about her leaving?
’I’ve been meaning to ask,’ I jumped in when Alice stopped for a breath. I directed my question at Brin. ‘I’ve been dying to know how you manage to get through the Veil. Alice said you had a thing...’
‘This!’ He finally exploded into action as he dug around in his pants pocket and slapped a little bit of metal onto the coffee table. He wasn’t getting any calmer. ‘Take it, I can’t stand to have it on me any longer!’ He darted glances all around him as if fearing an invisible onlooker, yet there was only the three of us present.
Alice looked at him and sighed audibly.
I shook my head and kept my hands firmly on my lap. I didn’t even want to touch it by accident, not until I knew what the thing was, but I leaned over to examine it more closely.
The object was circular, like a coin with a hole in the center, but thinner and plain, no writing on it. It looked more like a washer actually, a boring industrial bit of metal, but it was black and dull, as if it sucked in the lights around us rather than reflecting them.
I sniffed the air around it. The thing had magic infused into it, but I’d never felt the like of it before. Could it be forged from that mysterious magical metal adamantite?
This had to be Elf magic. I shook my head again. ‘I’m not touching it. You’d best return it to where ever it came from.’
With a quick sharp movement, he swept it off the table. ‘I’m done with it. I’m done with them all.’
‘Well, I am so happy to hear that.’ Alice said as she stood with her hands on her hips. ‘Honestly, you’re out every evening with meetings and whatnot and it’s not making you happier that I can see.’ She bustled away to put the kettle on to boil in the old fashioned kitchen, leaving us alone in his front room.
‘I need to speak with Jon!’ He whispered as soon as she was out of the room.
I hemmed and hawed and shrugged. ‘What’s the matter?’
No way would I let Brin get near Dad.
‘The elves,’ he burst, unable to keep it in any longer. ‘They’re ramping up the action!’
‘What exactly are they going to do?’ I kept my voice calm and pitched low. I wasn’t worried. Cate was in charge of this, she’d never let Eldric do anything really terrible. She’d control him, like she controlled so much.
Alice passed back into the room. ‘What’s that you’re talking about?’
Neither of us answered.
‘You’ll take good care of Brin when I’m gone, right Dara? Keep him away from those politics.’
I forced a smile on my face. ‘It’s probably a good idea to loosen the ties,’ I suggested to him, very pointedly.
‘Yeah, they sound like a bunch of troublemakers, actually,’ she said seriously. ‘And Brin still only has landed immigrant status, he hasn’t received his full citizenship yet. I don’t want him to jeopardize the process.’
‘Good point,’ I said and I turned to address him. ‘You should back away from it all. This might be a good time to cut off the contact.’
‘It’s too late for that,’ he muttered, then he paused as the kettle began to shriek and Alice went back to make the tea. He stood up and began pacing.
‘Calm down, Brin,’ I said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Calm?’ he shouted. ‘How can I be calm? It’s a disaster. Eldric is...’
‘Lower your voice. What’s going on?’
‘Jon needs to know what is happening,’ he said. His eyes were still wide but at least he was speaking more quietly. ‘Eldric is false.’
That revelation didn’t surprise me one little bit, but alarm bells were sounding clearly now. Brin was upset at something, yes, something that the Dark Elf had done or revealed, and something he felt Dad should know about. And if he spoke to Dad, then undoubtedly my omission in my report would be revealed and... Better not to go there.
‘Now, tell me,’ I said, keeping my voice low. ‘What exactly is going on?’
‘I can no longer go along with this,’ Brin said, still quivering with emotion. He sat heavily back on to the armchair.
‘It’s getting out of hand,’ he continued. ‘This is much larger than me. I had hopes, dreams, and I thought he shared them. But he wants...’
‘Yes?’ My voice was terse.
‘He plans violence,’ Brin whispered. He glanced around although we were quite alone in the small space. Alice was humming to herself as she waited for the tea to steep, and I heard the metal scrape of a cookie tin being opened.
‘How?’ I began, then switched tracks. ‘What? Why? How do you know?’
‘I’ve suspected for a while,’ he said as he looked at me sombrely. ‘Especially after the other night. He threatened your well-being, as you know.’
I nodded. I’d been there.
‘I've been given orders,’ Brin continued, then he began to shake his head. ‘I’m afraid he... he plans to directly attack the Kin. Dara, there’s going to be violence, bloodshed, and I don’t want any part of it.’
Brin was scared. Afraid enough to back out and run to Jon and confess everything about his part so far in the involvement with Eldric. And that meant he would tell Dad about how I’d been taken up with it all, reluctantly and more as an innocent bystander, of course, but that wouldn’t excuse my omission in the report. Sure, Brin wouldn’t rat me out on purpose, but I knew that elf. Once he started, he wouldn’t be able to stop especially in the light of Dad’s questioning, and he would spill the beans on everything I hadn’t mentioned in my report.
Yet, Cate said she was on top of it all. Cate of all witches wouldn’t allow Eldric to cause harm to the Kin, surely. My mind flashed back to the tennis court that first afternoon, how she had stood in the center of the court, not breaking a sweat as I ran hither and thither trying to match her game.
Control. She had been the calm center, controlling the game.
Brin,’ I said again. ‘I think you’re over-reacting. Why don’t you just tell me everything, right from the beginning?’
He gaped at me. ‘Over-reacting? But the Dark Elves, Dara, they’re coming, they’re planning something...’
‘What exactly is it you fear?’
‘Mayhem! Murder! They won’t stop till they’ve brought down every single one of the Kin!’
Cate was Kin. She would never allow that to happen to her own kind. I shook my head. ‘No, that won’t happen. Cate has it under control.’
‘Jon’s wife?’ Now Brin’s jaw hung slackly. ‘You hate her. How do you know what she’s doing?’
‘We’ve had our differences in the past, me and Cate,’ I said, a little annoyed at him for bringing up my ancient history. ‘But we’ve smoothed over them, as mature adults do. We’re...’ No, I couldn’t tell him that Cate and I were working together. Not with his loose mouth. Brin had lots of good qualities, but he would never be a politician, he was far too trusting a soul and a blabbermouth to boot.
‘I tell you what,’ I said as I leaned over the coffee table. ‘I will look into all this, your claims. There’s got to be an explanation.’
‘You don’t have much time,’ he said. He was wringing his hands with anxiety. ‘This is of the utmost urgency, for there’s something planned very soon.’
A niggle of disquiet worried the back of my mind. ‘How soon is soon?’
He shrugged.
‘Tonight soon, or sometime later this week or month soon?’
He shrugged again.
‘Well, do you have any idea what it is, this thing Eldric is planning?’
‘There’s mention of a bomb!’ he hissed, his eyes wide. ‘Something to do with the Temple, I wasn’t close enough to get the details.’
Seriously? A bomb. That just sounded so... so mundane. ‘Well, in that case, their calendar is a little off.’ I smiled at him and leaned back in my chair. ‘They’ve missed the Solstice service. We have time to figure this out.’
‘What can you do about it?’ His eyes were growing large again, I could almost smell his fear rising. ‘You’re not a real witch, you’re not trained enough. No, we need to tell Jon, the others, the ones in charge of everything.’
That stung. Not a real witch. What did he know? Brin had no idea what had happened to me over in Scotland, how my contact with the Crystal Charm Stone had increased my powers one hundredfold, or how if I ever learned to use that power I would be quite the force to be reckoned with.
But I swallowed my hurt ego. We didn’t have a lot of time before Alice would return with the tea tray.
‘So, what sort of bomb and where?’ I asked him under my breath. ‘And who’s going to plant it? Eldric?’
‘Or his horrible new worker. That Scottish goblin.’
‘The Scottish...’ I stared at him as the realization broke over me. There was only one Scottish goblin on this side of the water, or at least in this town. The irrepressible, unkillable Trevor. But he was working with Cate. What did this mean?
She was in charge of this whole mess, or so she claimed, and Trevor was working under her command. I was beginning to get a little nervous over the choices I had made.
But a bomb? That didn’t sound like any super natural’s choice of weapon. It was so... blatant. So Normal, so unmagical. There was something very wrong with this whole picture. I needed to talk with Cate. She would have the answers.
16
I suppose I could have phoned her, but I needed to see her face to face when I asked the questions which were racing through my mind. Did she know that Trevor might be involved with the treasonous acts of the Dark Elves?
And seriously – how much threat was a physical bomb against witches? Sure it might damage their Temple, but it just seemed so out of place, so childish.
It took me quite a while to bike up to Cate’s estate in the east end, but my body was hard and fit now so I was hardly out of breath even biking up that last hill. I left my bike right by the grand front entrance and ran up the stairs. I knocked, then walked on in as if I belonged there.
Dad’s moving out hadn’t changed things one bit here in Cate’s house. The downstairs rooms still held the same chic yet comfortable furnishings, every chair a masterpiece of workmanship, a unique marvel hand crafted and upholstered in fabrics that weren’t bought off the shelf at Fabricville. Every item, whether it was a coffee table, the long antique dining room set, even the simple vases by the balustrade leading upstairs, every piece had its own story and history, and that would never come cheap. No, the whole house had been furnished according to Cate’s explicit instructions and taste. Maybe it had never really been Dad’s home, despite him having lived there for most of his life. It had been his family estate, not hers, yet she had redone the whole place.
‘Cate?’ My voice echoed through the grand hallway, bouncing off the many closed doors and the stained glass windows lining the landing on the staircase. I heard a slight movement upstairs, but no answering call, so I set off climbing to look for her. At the head of the stairs, two corridors faced me. I listened, but heard nothing further. I knew Sasha’s room was down the right hallway, the turret room, so I cautiously went down the other, shorter corridor. One closed door stood apart, the only entrance on that side of the hall, and I bet that was the Master bedroom. I knocked.
I heard soft footsteps on carpet, and then there she was. Her face broke into a smile when she saw it was me.
‘Dara, what perfect timing,’ she said as she opened the door wider to welcome me in.
The Master bedroom was more like a hotel suite than a private chamber. Inside the door was the first room, a large sitting room, the same white on dark theme that was evidenced in the rooms below. Pale velvet sofas on a neutral rug, dark wood furniture against the huge and colorful paintings on the walls. Various doors led off this room, and Cate led me through one.
As I followed her, I could only gasp at the dress she wore. It was a gown in every sense of the word. Sweeping low to the ground, rainbow hues flashed with every movement she made as if the silk itself were infused with magic. It shimmered, hugging her curves lightly but loosely, and her hair was piled up on top of her head in an intricate arrangement of curls.
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘I didn’t realize you were going out.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m in for the night.’
‘It’s just your dress and your hair...’
‘Ah,’ she replied, looking down and brushing the silk so it glimmered and glowed even more. She led me into her dressing room, a huge space of course, lined with closet doors and a three way mirror. She sat at a large make up table and waved her hand to the chaise longue, telling me to sit. ‘I’m not going out, but I am expecting company. You’re welcome to join us.’
I perched at the edge of the white velvet seat. I’d had these cut-off shorts on all day, working in the garden with Mom, then biking all around town. I wasn’t dressed for the grand company she evidently expected. I watched as she fitted something amongst her elaborate hairdo.
‘’What do you think? She turned back to me as she asked, and the diamonds in her tiara caught the light and flashed like the brightness in her dark eyes.
‘It’s very regal,’ I managed to say.
Cate grinned as she fastened bracelets around her wrists. ‘It’s important to dress for the job you want,’ she murmured as she turned back to the mirror to give her facade the final touch ups with her lipstick.
‘Just a joke,’ she threw over her shoulder. ‘But I’m expecting someone who thinks he’s very important, and he would be decidedly unhappy if I didn’t treat this occasion with all the pomp he feels he deserves.’
She stood up, and the full effect of her gown with her jewellery was amazing. Diamonds dripped from her wrists and around her neck, combined with the tiara, which now looked more like a crown. We left her suite and walked toward the grand staircase.
The heels she wore made her even taller than normal, and with her natural slimness and beauty, she looked like how Normals might imagine a dark Fairie Queen would appear. I, on the other hand, felt as insignificant as a goblin by her side, in my grubby day clothes, baggy t-shirt and Mom’s jean jacket and my uncombed hair tied back with an elastic band.
‘So this is an unexpected visit,’ she reminded me as we reached the head of the stairs. Her hand lightly touched the ornately carved balustrade and she gracefully flowed downstairs.
I started, remembering why I was here. ‘I was speaking with Brin, you know, the elf?’
‘I’m familiar with Brin and his story,’ she replied with a small smile.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Well, Dad was pushing me to get another report for the Kin, and so I went over there to Brin’s house, and he’s told me something about a bomb! The elves are planning to blow up the Temple, he said.’ I stopped there as the ludicrousness of my words hit me.
