Illicit Magic (32 page)

“We’ll remove the bodies,” said the team leader, nodding at his men who were waiting for instruction. “And we’ll put everything to rights.”

“The council knows about this?” David asked.

“The order came from Steven,” confirmed the leader, removing his mask to show an unremarkable middle-aged face. “Killed a vampire, huh?” He looked vaguely pleased and full of admiration as I remembered Meg. Her ashes still smouldered in a heap a few feet away from me. I didn’t think there was anything to celebrate about her losing her life. As far as I knew, she was a sweet old lady who offered room and board to people she didn’t have to give a damn about. I didn’t want to get my head around the bit about her being a vampire just yet. Now that I had witches and vampires checked on my list, I didn’t even want to think about what else might be out there. I still wasn’t even certain what Evan was.

“She was a good person,” I muttered, too weak to argue. I was almost grateful that the SWAT guy let it pass without comment.

The crew ignored me. “Anyone else we should know about?”

David took the lead again. “There’s just me and Stella here. Christy and Clara somewhere too; I guess they’re hiding. Everyone else has gone.” He looked around for his students, like it just dawned on him that he had no idea where they were.

The man nodded and turned his back to issue directions to his team. Some of them fanned out through the house, weapons at the ready. When they returned a few minutes later, they whispered to their team leader and he turned to us impassively. “They found two more bodies upstairs. Two girls.”

David nodded, his head bowed. He sighed. “Christy and Clara. What happened to them?”

“According to my team, they were hit by a pulse of magic that took them straight out. They wouldn’t have felt a thing.”

It was strange to hear a magical SWAT team use the same platitudes that a regular cop would use. I was too exhausted to comment; too worn out to even cry. I didn’t know if I should feel relief or anguish as the crew retreated outside. Presently, they came back, minus their helmets and protective vests, carting cases loaded up with chemicals and mops. They were like a domestic cleaning crew, but on steroids.

I couldn’t take anymore. I’d have to leave the questions and any supervision to David who, thankfully, had been spared most of the fighting. For me, the idea of talking calmly and logically about what happened was just too much.

Stumbling past them, I lurched out of the room and aimed for the stairs. If I’d been in my right mind, or even a little less tired, I could have zapped myself to my room but I had to salvage what little energy I had left.

The upstairs landing was just about intact and no one had been fighting in the bedrooms. My room was exactly as I left it.

I headed straight for the bathroom and scrubbed my face and hands until they were pink and clean. I wanted to throw up as I pulled off my bloody clothes, dumping them on the bathroom floor.
Maybe the cleanup crew would take them
I hoped as I pulled on clean jeans, a tee and zip-up sweatshirt. I didn’t want to see a single stitch of those clothes ever again.

When I stepped into my bedroom, still slightly rumpled from Marc’s rifling, the weight of what happened hit me. All the adrenaline that had kept me upright and talking dissolved and I dropped to my knees in the centre of the room, my chest heaving as the sobs wrenched my heart.

FOURTEEN

I waited for three days and no one came.

That night, my world fell apart again and I spent it sitting at the top of the staircase, my knees huddled to my chest with one of Evan’s sweaters wrapped around me. It was the only place I could perch to watch the supernatural clean-up crew as they put the house to rights without getting in their way.

Four of them stayed, each in navy jackets and caps so dark they were almost black, speaking quietly to each other while they worked. Though they didn’t use any magic, there was something “other-worldly” about them and I knew they weren’t the type of workmen you would find in a regular phonebook. I didn’t know how to call them, or how Steven was tipped off to our plight, but I felt glad someone had sent them to clean up the mess that had been left behind. I was sure they would send a full report back to the council and it wouldn’t be pretty.

They took Eleanor and Robert’s bodies first, zipping their corpses in body bags and moving them to a waiting van. I heard what I thought was the foreman, who doubled as supernatural SWAT leader, and another workmen discussing the “accident” they would stage to cover up the deaths so no questions would arise from the regular authorities. Apparently, they would “die” in a fireball of a car accident on their way home to the city from a short distance away. Their brand new Mercedes would be driven down from their apartment to complete the picture. It was plausible and a good way to ensure their estate wouldn’t be wrapped up in probate for years on account of their disappearance or any autopsy investigating why Eleanor’s heart was missing with no visible wound. Marc would be able to grieve publicly. No one would know Eleanor was a murdering maniac. No one would ask questions. People would eventually move on.

They took Jared next. As I looked at his frozen face before they zipped him up, I thought it was such a waste that he had been killed for nothing. I wondered if he had family and who would mourn him. I hoped someone would. I didn’t see them take Christy and Clara and I felt grateful I didn’t have to see their once vibrant bodies now lifeless. I’d never thought of them separately – they were always Christy and Clara, never one or the other – and it reassured me a little to think they were eternally together now.

The bodies gone, the remainder of the team started the cleaning process and I was surprised that they had regular cleaning chemicals among their kit. I don’t know what I expected them to use. The living room and hallway had taken the worst of the violence. The team soaked the blood from the floor and removed rugs, stacking debris in the hallway. Curtains were pulled down and the sofas were “ummed” and “ahhed” over before being finally removed. They were totalled.

I watched from the stairs as they swept up Meg’s ashes. I could hardly believe that she had lived for decades only to be murdered in her own house. I wondered if she was relieved her long life was, at last, over. I hoped she was at peace. I also hoped to hell she was the only vampire I’d ever meet because I was sure she wasn’t indicative of her kind.

David sat with me for a while but we didn’t speak. Having him next to me, however, was a small comfort and stopped me having a melt-down.

When the workmen came to the area where Evan’s wound still stained the floor, the wood inexplicably started to bubble. At first, I thought magic had charred it.

“Fucking daemons,” one of the men spat in a cockney accent, his face filled with disgust as he poured solution from a jar he’d uncapped. I wondered how he came to be so far from London but I’d never ask. “Can’t live with ‘em, can’t clean up after ‘em.” The wooden floor began to fizz against the chemicals and the smell coiled towards me. I couldn’t watch anymore. My stomach heaved and I made it to the bathroom with only seconds to spare before I hurled into the bowl.

I stayed away from the cleaning crew after that. I didn’t want to think about what they meant by daemon. I didn’t get the impression the cockney man felt it was some kind of racial slur, but rather a statement of fact and that worried me. I knew Evan was something else but I assumed it was something more akin to me. I had no frame of reference for daemons.

“They’re like us, but not like us,” David told me. I sat on my bed with my head bent over my knees to stop the dizziness from making me pass out. My cranium was throbbing again; the pain that began during the fight had edged up to my temples. “Daemons are magic, like us, but it’s a different kind of magic. Our magic can be divided into two; witchcraft and pure magic. They’re just pure magic.” He made them sound like a cereal choice.

“Demons are evil,” I said, my voice squeaking through my arms.

“Daemons,” David emphasised. I felt the bed indent as he sat down next to me. “They look like us, some of them, and gradually, you’ll be able to tell them apart from humans, witches and well ... everything else.” I didn’t even want to think about what he meant by that as he continued. “They share magic with us but they are faster and stronger, among other assets, and they can shift between planes. Just because Evan is a daemon doesn’t mean you have to think any differently of him.”

“Why didn’t he say anything?” I was pitifully aware my voice had become a thin whine.

“I guess because so many witches hate his kind. It’s kind of a mutual thing.”

“You all don’t hate him,” I protested.

David shook his head. “No, but we’re not all entirely comfortable with him either.”

“How can you say that?” I raised my head to glare at him. “You lived under the same roof as he. He took a blast for me!” I didn’t bother to add that we still didn’t even know if he had lived through it.

“If you ever have the misfortune to meet other daemons, the kind you don’t want to meet, you’ll see.” David gulped as if he had unpleasant memories to swallow. “Evan is very, very powerful and we’re lucky he’s not against us, but other daemons are. Plus, he’s my friend and he might freak me out at times, but I can deal with that.” Fatigued, I collapsed and let David wrap his arms around me as I cried on his shoulder.

Still, no one came for me.

On the third day, I woke alone in the house. I couldn’t find David, though his car hadn’t moved. I had no way to contact Étoile or Seren. They promised to come back for me once Evan was safe. The clean-up crew had finally gone and the house was looking perfect again even though the living room was missing its array of comfortable furniture. My head still hurt and the panic was rising in me as I gasped for breath.

With a knot in my chest, the ragged sobs ripped from me as soon as I went back to my room after searching through the house. I hunched forward on my bed, my balled fists pressed against my streaming eyes. When the tears finally subsided, I wiped my eyes with the backs of my hands and dried them on the blanket. Only one thought echoed through me.
Since they hadn’t come back, Evan’s injuries must have been more severe than we thought.

He might even be dead.

Perhaps they didn’t want to come back for me.

The unpalatable thoughts swirled in my head and I cried again for my lot before I managed to stagger off to my bed. I fell asleep in my clothes and felt musty and unkempt. On auto-pilot, I brushed my teeth and hair, splashed water on my tear-streaked face and pulled on fresh jeans and a button-down shirt. After a moment, I shucked them again, showered quickly and pulled my clothes back on when I was properly clean.

From the bathroom doorway, I looked around my room.
I loved it here,
I realised with a pang of sadness that cut deep into me. I felt safe, mostly, and amongst friends. For a while, I felt that a future with Evan might be on the cards.

I couldn’t help remembering the last time I’d packed so fast. My grimy hovel in London was a distant memory and I’d acquired so much more since then. Not material things but friendship, someone I loved and who, I thought, might have loved me. It hurt to acknowledge that I had lost my new life even faster than my old one.

Evan might die – might have died – because he tried to protect me with the speed and strength David said daemons possessed, against a malevolent, vengeful witch at the top of her game. The anxiety gripped me like a fracture spreading through my being and I clutched my head. Kitty had been tortured because of me. I attacked Astra, the sister Étoile and Seren had tried to find and save. Even Meg’s unnaturally long life had come to a swift end. Not to mention extracting Eleanor’s heart from her body while her son watched.
I was probably quite unlikely to win Friend of the Year.

It was the oldest story in the book, of course. Unrequited love devastated not just one family’s lives, not just robbed me of a mother and father but also of the love they would have given me. They would have been my guides through this strange life but they lost me, and I them, in the minutes it took to snatch their lives from them. I could only fleetingly be glad that my father had made the snap decision, in his terror, to hide me before returning to my mother’s side and dying. I had no doubt Eleanor would have snuffed me too, even though I was just a child.

Eleanor was mad. I could never be sure if it was due to the grief of not being loved back, the grief of having to remain with a husband she considered her inferior, or a son she didn’t care for, or because she was already on the precipice of insanity.

She spent years subverting herself in her misery, pretending to be the perfect wife; and then I stumbled into her home, on the run from witch hunters. Yet, she couldn’t even let me go then. It was all too clear. She had glimpsed me in the house that night almost two decades ago and never lost her fear that I would remember she killed my parents. She thought I would avenge their deaths and tried to kill me first. By that point, she didn’t care who she took down with her.

The sad thing was that I didn’t remember ever seeing her. If Eleanor had left me alone, I might never have known the reason for my parents’ death or her role in it. I would have stayed entirely oblivious. There was some sort of cruel irony in that.

It didn’t take me long to pack again. I tucked my blue box of keepsakes and papers in the top of my bag and zipped it shut, rearranging the contents so the one thing I would need first was right at the top. As I took one last look around the room in the house of happiness and heartbreak, at the pretty yellow walls and the window that offered me a last glimpse of the waves breaking against the beach if I craned my head just far enough, I felt a great upsurge of sadness wash over me again.

I breathed in the house for the last time, then closed my eyes, picturing the place I wanted to be and with all the strength that I had left in me, ported myself out of there.