Witch Way Out (Witch Detectives #3) (11 page)

“Oh, right. I can give you some space if you like.”

“You don’t need to go, Siobhan,” I said. “This is your home, too.”

“No, it’s all right. I should get back to the office. We think we’ve got a lead in the case of the woman who’s being cheated on. We think…we think her husband is cheating on her with…well, her.”

“What?”

“Marie helped us get the photos to prove it. Her and her husband, sneaking around together. It’s why I’m back here. I know you’ve got a few books from your mother, so I’m looking through to see what it might be. So far, I’ve narrowed it down to doppelgangers, illusions and memory spells to make her forget…anyway, I’ve got a lot to take back to the office.”

“Thanks, Siobhan,” I said. It occurred to me just how invaluable she’d become recently, despite no longer having her contacts below ground. “I don’t know how we’d be able to do all this without you.”

It was worth saying it just for the smile that crossed her features then.

“I’ll get going,” she said. “I’ll leave the two of you to…clean up.”

She got going, and I did indeed head for the shower. Niall didn’t follow me immediately though, staying for a moment and leafing through some of the material Siobhan had left behind.

“You’re more interested in research than in helping me to get clean?” I asked.

“I just find it interesting that something like this is happening at the same time as the rest of it.”

“What can I say? Magical cases are like buses. You wait forever for one, then three come along at once.”

“Perhaps, although it’s more than just three if you’re coaxing my PA into helping with stakeouts.”

I held up my hands. “Nothing to do with me. That’s probably Fergie talking her into it. Or Marie deciding for herself. You have to admit, she wouldn’t be working for you if she didn’t have at least some interest in the supernatural.”

Niall put down the book, came over and kissed me. “Are we going to start discussing my employees, or are we going to find this shower of yours?”

We decided on the second option, and it was an amazing feeling, Niall doing something so simple as washing the dirt and the grime from my skin. We were still in there, just considering all the other possibilities that the shower offered, when my phone rang.

“Leave it,” Niall suggested.

The trouble was, it
kept
ringing. When the first one went straight to voicemail, whoever it was simply called me again, and again.

“Niall, I have to.”

He looked up from kissing the nape of my neck. “Oh, all right. If only so that we can continue without distractions.”

 I got out of the shower, wrapping a towel around me as I grabbed my phone, not quite sure why I did it. The caller ID said that it was Siobhan, but if she needed to talk to me, she couldn’t have been far from the house, could she?

“Siobhan? What’s so urgent?”

“Elle, I was worried you wouldn’t answer. I…I think I’m being followed.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. It’s like when we were out together the other day. I keep catching glimpses. They…they’re between me and the house.”

I took a breath, trying to think. “All right, Siobhan. You’re on the way to the office?”

“Yes.”

“Right, keep going. Don’t let them think that there’s anything wrong. If you can make it there, maybe Fergie being at the office will prevent them from doing anything. I’ll try to catch you up. Don’t worry, Siobhan, I’m coming.”

I hung up and dressed as quickly as I could. “Niall, you need to get out of there. Siobhan’s in trouble. Someone’s following her.”

Niall didn’t hesitate. He was out of the shower and dressing as quickly as I was. “She’s heading for your office? Then I’ll take the car and try to beat her there. If someone sets a trap, then it makes sense for it to be close to the place they know she has to go.”

I hadn’t thought of that, but maybe that just had something to do with the long life Niall had spent as a hunter. He’d stalked plenty of people before I’d come along. There wasn’t enough time to think about it further though. I had to get to Siobhan.

I threw on my clothes and got out of the house inside of a couple of minutes. I sprinted for the office, sprinting the way only I could, pushing my body faster than any human could have. I got stares from people around me as I ran, but I pushed their attention away easily with my magic. I saw them almost as a sea of intentions, stepping through the gaps between them easily as I tried to catch up to Siobhan.

I was almost to the office by the time I saw her, just a street or two away from it. So close, I could pick her out by the taste of her emotions. With my senses stretched, I could also feel the attention on her. I could feel that someone was watching her, and they weren’t friendly at all. I ran up to her, so quickly that she spun toward me, her claws raised to fight.

“It’s all right, Siobhan,” I said. “I’m here.”

“Elle, I thought you weren’t going to make it. They’re…I know they’re closing in. I
know
it.”

I wasn’t going to argue with that. Siobhan had lived in a world where violence and danger were a daily fact of life. Besides, I could feel the hunters coming in around us. The trouble was, I couldn’t feel them precisely enough. In a crowd like this, an attacker could come out of nowhere. They could be in long enough to stab or shoot one of us before either of us saw them coming. We needed to get out of here. We needed to get to safety.

“Siobhan, stay close to me. As close as you can.”

Siobhan didn’t argue, but grabbed my arm. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to create a distraction.”

“How?”

I smiled. “Like this.”

I reached out for the emotions of the crowd. They weren’t that strong, but there were enough pedestrians around us that I could do something. Specifically, I could do something I’d done back in the depths of the tunnels beneath Edinburgh, when Victoria’s goblins had tried to help her in her fight against me.

I channeled the emotion I found around me into magic, and I shaped that magic into images of Siobhan and me. We stepped together, and each time we stepped, we left behind an afterimage that seemed to move off in a different direction. I pulled Siobhan to the side then, into the thickest part of the Edinburgh crowds, and I pushed out the thickest wall of not noticing I could manage. People walked past us without even glancing in our direction. Families stepped around us without ever really noticing why they did.

And a half-dozen figures chased after phantasms in the middle of it all. I didn’t get much of a look at any of them thanks to the crowd in the way, but I got glimpses of them. Of the hooded tops, carefully keeping their features out of the sun.

“Come on, Siobhan,” I said. “We need to get out of here, and I’ve seen enough.”

I led her away through the crowd, taking a slightly more circuitous route toward the office, just in case Siobhan’s pursuers realized that she would be heading there. I didn’t stop until we were both safely inside and Siobhan was looking back out over the street.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “They were following me out there.”

I nodded. The carefully hooded figures had certainly seemed to be. The first time it had happened, I’d thought that they might have been watching me, but this was different. “It certainly looks like it. And they were goblins. Who else would want to keep out of the sun like that?”

Siobhan swallowed. “But why would goblins want to come after me up here?”

I had an answer to that. Something Ulm and the others had said. Something I probably should have told Siobhan at the time. “Actually, I think I need to tell you something, Siobhan.”

“How was someone meant to find goblins who obviously didn’t want to be found? I could have tried heading Underneath. I could have walked around in the dark until I found them, but the obvious problem with that was the number of things that might find me first. Yet, I didn’t think that the goblins I’d met before were so completely out of reach. They’d said they wanted me on their side, so presumably, they wanted me to be able to contact them.

Probably, assuming that anything they had told me was the truth.

This was why I found myself heading back into Edinburgh’s Vaults, looking along the walls while a ghost walk went on around me. I looked for the slight shift in emotional energy that would indicate that someone had been in one of the arches more than the others, feeling for the slight differences in taste that said goblin and not human.

I found what I was looking for a couple of arches over from the one where I’d met Ulm and the others the first time. I waited for the tour to pass by and then stepped in, feeling closer. Had one stone received more attention than all the others? Did one spot feel like an opening?

I felt the presence behind me the instant before Luc spoke. “They said you would be back.”

“You shouldn’t go creeping up on people.”

“Really?” Luc smiled as I turned around. “That sounds like no fun at all.”

“You think that this is about fun?” I asked.

He shrugged eloquently. “What is the world for if not for that? I think we could have a lot of fun, Elle Chambers.”

“I bet you do. I’m with someone.”

The strangely beautiful goblin laughed at that. “That kind of thing matters less than you think. To us, at least.”

“To us?”

“I am a goblin, and you…you’re an
enchantress
. More than a mere witch. You think these human standards apply to us?”

“You think you’re good-looking enough to be worth my time?” I countered.

Luc put his hand over his heart. “Oh, you wound me.” He paused. “I’m to take you to them now you’ve arrived.”

“You’ve been waiting for me? All this time?” It seemed inconceivable that he could have been, but how else could he be here the moment I arrived to look for the others?

“I’m very patient. Especially when it comes to women.”

He smiled again, and I had to admit to feeling a flash of attraction as he did it. Luc was nothing like the ugly goblins out of storybooks. There was something almost dangerously handsome about him as he stood there, waiting for me to follow.

I did follow, waiting as he touched a section of wall and stepped into the space that opened up as a result. I trailed after him as he led the way beyond, down into a half-darkness with the familiar warmth of the goblins’ tunnels.

“What do you do for Ulm and the rest, Luc?” I asked.

“Whatever they ask.”

“Chasing after Siobhan?”

“Not me. I was waiting for you, remember? They said to fetch you when you came, and so I fetch.”

“And if I were to try to leave right now?” I asked.

I could feel the amusement there. He knew the game we were playing. “I’d stop you.”

I would have liked to see him try. Or maybe I wouldn’t, come to think of it. Either way, I followed him down into the dark until we came to an open, better-lit space, with several corridors leading off it. It contained a table and a few chairs, all roughly crafted. Luc gestured to one of the chairs.

“Wait here.”

I thought about giving him a taste of my power and forcing him to take me where I needed to go, yet even as I thought about it, shields seemed to slide smoothly into place around Luc’s emotions. He smirked, then stepped back into the dark of one of the tunnels, leaving me with just the memory of that Cheshire cat smile.

With nothing else to do, I took a seat. The room around me was bare, just roughly hewn stone. I sat there staring at it, thinking about the strength and effort it must have taken to produce this place. To produce all the goblins’ tunnels. They weren’t weak, and there were a lot of them. Maybe I’d made a mistake in coming down here like this.

The three of them came out of different tunnels. I didn’t know if that was for effect, or if they had genuinely taken different routes to get to me. Kal stood to the left, his strange, hybrid features shown clearly by the light of the room we were in. Nea was off to the right, looking far less fearsome than Kal did. Ulm was the one who came forward a few steps.

That was why he was the one I grabbed as I stood, easily vaulting the table.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you, here and now.”

“I can give you one.” Nea was at my side, and she had a knife in either hand. One was at my throat, the other lower, by my kidneys.

Kal didn’t have that much subtlety. He roared and started forward. I reacted on instinct, lashing out with fear to buy myself a moment in which to act. I shoved Ulm at him, spinning away from Nea just fast enough to stop her from cutting my throat. Her blade still sliced along my collarbone, though, leaving a painful slash in the skin. I grabbed for the power of the anger I felt around me, throwing it in a spell that knocked all three goblins flat.

Kal hauled himself to his feet like an angry bear. Nea leapt lightly to hers. Ulm stayed sitting, but he somehow managed to exude authority despite that.

“Stop this. Everybody stop.”

The goblins froze. Even I paused while the goblin leader stood.

“What is this about, Elle? I do not think you would attack us without a reason.”