2 Witch and Famous (21 page)

“You trapped Niall in a hole. You left him to die. You left me to feed on some innocent human. Did you really think that Niall was going to sit back and allow that?”

“Niall, give up his power, for that?” Victoria stared at me in disbelief. “For
you
?”

“For love,” I said, “but then, you wouldn’t understand that part, would you? Love is just a word to you. Did you tell Jessica Hammersmith that you loved her before you killed her? Have you told the goblins that you love them, and that is why you’re leading them to their deaths? Did you tell Niall that you loved him, when you used him and bound him to you, tricked him and made him a killer?”

“I loved him,” Victoria insisted. “And he loved me. He cared for me once. He would have again. He would have remembered what we had. Or do you think he loves you?”

I looked at her levelly, wearing Niall’s power like a cloak as I stood there with the goblins around me. “I know he does, and so do you.”

“You are just a reminder of me. A cheap copy. A curiosity. Your entire family is nothing but an irritation.”

My entire family? I remembered the name scratched into the wall of the oubliette.

“Did you know my mother, Victoria?” I asked.

“Know her?” Just the way Victoria said it gave me my answer. “We are not talking about her.”

“I think I get to decide that.” I was standing in the middle of her throne room, in the exact spot where I had been seized before, but this time I didn’t feel helpless. This time, while I had Niall’s power thrumming through me, Victoria was the one who should be afraid. “Why is her name carved in the stone wall at the bottom of the oubliette?”

“Is it?” Victoria tried to make it sound casual.

“Did you put her in there?” I demanded.

“You’ll never know.” Victoria seemed pleased with that, as though hurting me just a little was enough. Had we reached the stage where it was enough to be petty? Victoria had a whole mob of goblins around me, and yet she felt that
this
was the best victory?

“What happened to my mother? Tell me, Victoria. As far as I knew, she had an accident. But the coven never told me the details.”

“This is not about your mother.”

Victoria was right about that part, at least.

“No, I suppose not,” I said. “This is about all the other people you have hurt. Jessica, the goblins, Siobhan, Dougie, who knows how many others. And Niall. Let’s not forget everything you did to Niall. You turned him into a killer.”

Victoria smiled back at me. “I didn’t turn him into anything. I showed him what he was, the way I tried to show you what you are. The way
I
was shown.”

I could hear the anger there. I could feel it, washing over me in waves. In that moment, something clicked for me.

“You really believe this, don’t you?” I looked around at the goblins she had seduced. Controlled. “You really think this is the only way. Who did this to you, Victoria? Who put you in a hole? Who forced you to kill, and told you that it was the only way you could live?”

“Do
not
try to feel pity for me,” Victoria snapped back. “I was powerful when the Romans thought this spot was too worthless to bother conquering. I have seen things,
been
things, that you could never imagine.”

“And Niall still chose me over you,” I said, simply.

“He was with me long enough,” Victoria snapped back. “You think I
forced
him to do everything we did? You know our kind can’t control each other’s emotions. If he killed, it was because he thought it was right. When we stole from people, it was
him
taking from them as much as me. I’m sure he still does.”

“Niall’s not a criminal.”

“Really? I’d heard rumors of an artwork being stolen that wasn’t stolen at all.”

“He did that to meet me,” I said. “A theft that wasn’t a theft, set against a murder. You’re going to have to do better than that.”

“What about all that wealth of his? The art, the house, the cars? Do you think he gets that by playing fair in his business dealings?”

No, he probably didn’t. Niall almost certainly took every advantage his powers allowed him. He hadn’t amassed his own goblin army, but that didn’t make him perfect. And yet…I’d known that he was dangerous when I first came to his bed. It didn’t stop me from loving him. I wasn’t sure anything could.

I looked down at Niall’s prone form, so still at the foot of the dais. “Look at him, Victoria. Really look. You did this. Do you never stop hurting others? Are you that evil?”

“Probably,” Victoria said. I could sense the sadness there, though. “Oh, Niall. He always was beautiful
. And
one for the grand gesture. Even when I was angry with him for leaving me, after the time we spent together, he was too beautiful to kill. Until you came into his life, we mostly left each other alone. So, is it my fault, or yours?”

I swallowed hard. Niall
was
beautiful in that moment, seeming almost to glow, even without power.

“Do you see it,” Victoria asked, “the luminescence?”

“Yes.”

“That means he is dying,” Victoria said. “Niall’s body is eating itself up from the inside. He cannot replace the power. He cannot feed. Eventually, a week from now or a month, his body will fail.”

“Can you help him?” I asked. This was what I’d been building up to. I could have charged in there ready for battle, but I’d talked first, and this was why. I needed Victoria.

“Of course I can. I
could
, anyway. For a price.” It was funny that, so soon after claiming she loved him, Victoria could sit there so calmly, watching Niall starting to fade. That she could talk about prices so casually with his life in the balance.

What else had I expected, though? Victoria might have been like me once, but now… now the damage had been done. Whatever humanity she’d had, it was long gone.

“What price?” It was Niall. I had to ask.

“You stand at my side. You do as I ask. You let me teach you what you need to know.” She gestured to the goblins around us. “You help me to give them back what was taken from us.”

It sounded such a simple offer, except that I knew what it would entail. Killing and more killing, until I was just like her. Even for Niall, I couldn’t do that.

“I have a counter-offer,” I said.

Victoria stared at me. “A
counter
-offer? With your love there dying? Are you so cold, Elle?”

Not half as cold as her. The difference was that while Victoria didn’t care about anyone, I cared enough to know that Niall would never want me to give in like that. He’d sacrificed himself to make sure that I wouldn’t have to.

“Here’s my counter-offer,” I said. “I gave you a chance before.” I looked her in the eye. “I told you to give me Niall and Dougie. Now it’s Niall and Siobhan, and the terms have changed. Give me back Niall, release Siobhan, release the witches and warlocks you’ve taken.”

“If I do all that, we’ll be friends again?” Victoria asked with obvious sarcasm.

I shook my head. “If you do that, I won’t kill you. You’ll have twenty-four hours to leave Edinburgh. To leave Scotland. You won’t come back.”

Victoria laughed again, although this time there was no humor in it. She stood up smoothly and gestured to the lingering figures behind me.

“It
has
been fun talking to you, Elle. Indulging this sense of justice you have. However, you’re forgetting one thing. I can still have my goblins put you back in the oubliette. Alone this time.”

I smiled. “I thought you might say that. You wanted me for my magic, Victoria. Well, let me show you magic.”

The first thing I did was pull the tattered hand fasting ribbon out of my handbag. I held it up for Victoria to see and incinerated it with a word. It was no more than a symbol, but some things mattered.

“You don’t have any power over Niall,” I said. “He’s mine, not yours. He will never be yours again.”

Victoria shrieked in fury as the old silk ribbons puffed up into a fireball and rose in the air, only to fall to ashes at her feet.

 “No!” she screeched. She gathered her power to retaliate. To crush me the way she had crushed me before. The move with the ribbon had been a mistake, but I had wanted it to be clear. Besides, I had plenty of tricks still up my sleeve.

I threw out an arm and threw magic with it. Not at Victoria, but at the throne behind her. I poured magic into it until it glowed red, and I beckoned, summoning it to me. It shot forwards, striking Victoria in the back. She roared in pain and turned, flinging it out over the crowd, just in time for it to explode in a spray of superheated fragments.

Goblins screamed and scattered. They grabbed their children and each other’s hands and backed into the walls in fear. Some of them ran, fleeing the throne room. Others drew weapons, as though wondering whether they should get involved, but not daring to yet.

“No,” Victoria yelled in fury, “I’ll
kill
you.”

Victoria lunged for me, but I was already moving. I’d always known she would deal with the chair. If I’d wanted it to explode where it was, it would have, but I couldn’t do that. Not with so many innocent humans around it, not to mention Siobhan and Niall’s slumbering form.

No, this was the best I could hope for. Although, when the best I could hope for was making an ancient enchantress so angry that she wanted to tear me limb from limb, maybe I had an odd definition of the phrase.

 I dodged Victoria’s first rush, kicking out at her knee to give myself space, and then whispered the words to another spell. Victoria threw herself flat as the blast of force ripped through the space where she had been standing, but that just meant she wasn’t quite quick enough to dodge as I kicked at her again, catching her in the side this time. She cried out in pain and rolled, coming up to her feet with murderous intent in her eyes.

She swung a slap at me then, and it was fast. Brutally fast, so that I barely ducked underneath it, somehow managing to hook a leg around hers as I drove my weight into her. We caught against the edge of the dais, falling in a tangled mess to the floor. I let go of her and rolled to my feet, knowing that I couldn’t stay down with so many people around me. Instead, I swung another kick at her on the floor, one that made Victoria grunt as she blocked it with both arms.

Victoria obviously realized then that a one-on-one fight was what I wanted, because she turned to the goblins around me, looking at them from the floor.

“Grab her. All of you, grab her!”

If I had stayed still, or if the majority of the goblins hadn’t still been reeling from the explosion above them, it might have worked. As it was, I danced past the first couple of goblins to come at me, dragging in their fear and anger, transmuting it as I thought of another spell. It was one I hadn’t tried before, but with so much emotion coming off the goblins, did it really matter?

I stepped quickly, and it seemed like I left the after-image of me behind as I stepped. I stepped once, twice, half a dozen times in quick succession, illusory copies of me peeling off in quick succession. I pushed away the goblins’ attention, letting it slide off me as I had with the crowd at the castle, and suddenly, my goblin assailants were chasing around after the fake versions of me.

“Enough of this,” Victoria snapped, pulling herself to her feet, and I could feel her drawing her power into herself as she did it. “Let me show you what power is, girl.”

She dragged back power from the goblins. She took it from the chains of emotion that she was using on the prisoners around her. She collected it up until she seemed to pulse with the power of her anger. Then she ran at me, her eyes latched onto me, her hands outstretched like claws.